Idealism sits in prison
by SunnyRea
Summary: Thomas Hamilton's ten years without James. -warnings for violence and non-con-
1. Bethlem Royal Hospital

Thomas and Miranda sit together in the upstairs parlor when it happens.

Peter adjourned to the study an hour past to read over Thomas' revised proposal should James' entreats to the Navy prove fruitless. Thomas hopes Peter can expand upon Thomas' ideas to make them still viable to the parliament's taste and approval. He does not want to give up yet despite the setback of the governor's murder. Surely, redemption can yet be attained for the pirates of Nassau? They are not all monsters despite the actions of a few. It could still work. Can they have come this far to fail now?

"You may have to accept the failure of this." Thomas looks at Miranda. She smiles in a grim way, clearly understanding his thoughts. "Progress is often unacceptable to men who hold to power and view that progress as a threat."

Thomas nods. "Does that mean we stop fighting for progress?"

"But for progress' sake?"

"Not for progress sake, for them." Thomas takes a sip of his wine. "For us."

Miranda opens her mouth to say something else then closes it again abruptly as they both hear the sound of rapid boots on wood from out in the hall. They turn together toward the far door to the parlor as it opens.

"Lord Thomas Hamilton." Thomas recognizes the group of men who enter as in the employ of his father. The one who spoke is called Rogers.

Thomas stands up. "What is the meaning of this?"

"We are hereby charged to take you into our custody."

"What?" Thomas and Miranda say at the same time.

Thomas hears her stand up behind him. Thomas glances back at Miranda who has an expression like dawning comprehension on her face. She shakes her head with a gasp. "Thomas…"

Thomas frowns and looks back the men. There are four of them and it is now that he notices one of them holds a set of manacles. He has to force himself not to take a step back.

"What is this about? Take me into your custody? Of what am I accused?"

Rogers holds up a folded piece of paper. "You are not accused, sir, you are judged."

"Judged?"

"You are to be committed to Bethlem Royal Hospital for crimes of gross indecency."

The floor seems to drop out from under Thomas. Behind him, Miranda makes a high quiet noise like pain. "This is ridiculous," Thomas says low and calm. "You are my father's men; you do not have the authority –"

"We do, sir."

One of the men steps forward and makes a move to grab Thomas' arm.

Thomas jerks away out of reach with a step back. "Do not touch me! This is absurd. My father –"

"Your father has brought this about. Your unnatural, profane behaviors must be paid for, a perversion of your mind only suitable for Bedlam."

"This is a pretense," Thomas insists. "My father cannot abide my political agenda running counter to his own. But to commit me?"

The men do not move from where they stand; do not stand down. Thomas wants to ask about James, fearful for what they might do, what they might be doing to him right now. He wants to run for the door but there is nowhere to go.

"This is unacceptable," Miranda says from behind him. "I will not allow you to take my husband anywhere."

Rogers, at the front of the gang, clearly in command, smiles in far too pleased a manner. "You have no choice, madam. Seize him."

The remaining three men move quickly, two grabbing Thomas by the arms almost before he realizes it. He tries to pull away but they are far stronger than he would have anticipated.

"Stop!" Miranda cries. She pulls at one of the men holding Thomas but he violently shoves her away so she knocks into the small wooden table between their chairs and falls to the floor with a cry, Thomas' glass of wine smashing into pieces.

"Leave her be!" Thomas snaps and struggles harder against the men holding him. "Unhand me!"

Peter suddenly appears from the study. "What in God's name is going on?"

"Lord Hamilton is overcome with grief at the knowledge of his wife's affair with Lieutenant McGraw," Rogers answers.

"What?" All three of them cry.

"Mrs. Hamilton and Lt. McGraw will flee this city, never to be seen again."

"What fiction is this?" Peter asks incredulously though the men pay him no mind.

"Stop this!" Thomas shouts, his panic attempting to get the better of him.

"And Lord Hamilton will be put away for his own safety." Rogers finishes as if Thomas and Peter have said nothing. Rogers smiles at Thomas in a hard way, with the knowledge of everything wrapped up into a perfect bow. Thomas the sacrificial lamb.

Suddenly things move very quickly. Thomas makes a renewed effort to pull free of his captors. The third man abruptly hits him hard on the head from behind. Peter rushes forward as Thomas feels himself falling. Miranda struggles to her feet, her skirts caught around her. Thomas hits the floor on his knees, feels blood on the back of his head. His vision clouds and he fights to keep from passing out. How hard did they hit him? Thomas struggles still, keeps thinking if he can just get away for a moment it will be close to even, three against four. Cold metal clamps around his one wrist and it sounds like the end.

Thomas' mind clears. He knows this is revenge, this is his father caring about power more than blood, hating Thomas as he as always hated him because they are not the same. This is his father ruining his life.

"Thomas!" Miranda's face fills Thomas' vision as she clutches at his hands, caught together now in the heavy manacles. "No! They cannot." She looks up. "You cannot do this!"

Thomas replays Rogers' words in his head 'Mrs. Hamilton and Lt. McGraw will flee this city,' which means James is not charged, convicted, or sentenced to hang. James is alive, he is all but free right now; James will live and Miranda can protect him.

"Miranda!" Thomas says desperately as the men try to pull him back to his feet. Her face snaps back to him. "Do not let him come after me!" Her face contorts in confusion. "Do not let James come after me, they will kill him!"

"We can't, we can't just leave you, Thomas!"

"They will kill him!" Thomas hisses urgently. The men's hands grip tighter, pulling back as though they will simply drag him across the floor. "No matter what happens next, take care of each other." They yank him up again so the manacles bite and his head stabs with the wound they caused but he is back on his feet once more, moving away from her.

Peter holds Miranda fast against himself as tears fall down her face. "No…"

"Please!" Thomas cries as they haul him toward the doors. "Promise me!"

"I promise… oh god, I promise!"

They reach the doors, the sound of hinges and wood scarping loud in Thomas' ears. He sees Miranda shove Peter away from her with an anguished cry then the heavy wooden doors slam shut in front of him.

* * *

Once the men drag Thomas outside his house, he has barely a minute to register the change in the air and mixed smells of London before they shove him in the back of a metal locking cab of the kind which ferry criminals. He thinks wildly how absurd such precautions are until he remembers that is what he is now, a prisoner, a criminal. The door locks and the cab trots quickly down the road. Thomas finds himself gripping the bars on the small back window watching his house recede from view. When they pause at a cross street, urchins from the corner come and look up at him, pointing and yelping to each other. Thomas pulls back into the recesses of the cab. He sits on the floor, keeping his back to the wall to ease some of the bumps and jolts of the cab with no usual soft seat to protect him from the uneven streets. He reaches with his manacled hands to feel the wound on the back of his head. His hands come away with spots of blood.

"Bastards," he mutters to himself.

After some time of travel with Thomas sliding about the cab and trying his best not to add injury to his person, the cab slows. Thomas hears the sound of a metal gate. He pulls himself back up to his knees so he may peer out of the barred side windows. As they pass through, he sees the wrought iron gate of Bedlam. From the side he looks out, he sees one of the statues which caps the column on one side of the gate. He remembers when Bedlam was rebuilt at Moorgate reading about the artist's renditions of the two states of the lunatic.

"Raving madness," Thomas whispers as he watches the twisted face of the statue pass by as the cab moves on.

He tries not to think things about symbols preceding reality. They drive by a manicured lawn, open with some trees and clearly never touched except to keep it trimmed. Then they pass through another gate and wall where Thomas sees people walking. The people wear simple clothes, some clearly ragged, dirty and Thomas realizes they are patients. It is in that moment that it truly hits home where Thomas has found himself.

The cab turns and stops with the tall, imposing edifice of Bethlehem Royal Hospital waiting beside it. The back of the cab clangs open and Thomas turns to Rogers waiting for him.

"We are here, my lord."

Rogers pulls Thomas from the cab. Two of the goons from earlier flank Thomas on either side while Rogers takes the lead. It seems all so unnecessary, so ridiculous. Do they think Thomas could run now with two sets of walls and gates behind him, with manacles on his wrists? Once they reach the stairs, the men grip his arms and walk him up through the door. Inside they meet a man who Thomas assumes must be the head of the hospital or some other high ranking doctor by the deference Rogers pays him.

"Mr. Thomas Weston, as Lord Alfred Hamilton wrote to you of earlier." Rogers steps to the side and holds out his hand to indicate Thomas. "His son, Thomas Hamilton."

"Ah yes," Weston looks down at some papers in his hand. "Extreme grief to the point of hysteria."

"I am Thomas Hamilton," Thomas says causing Weston to look up in surprise. Did he think Thomas could not speak? "And this fiction is of my father's making."

Weston raises his eyebrows once then looks at his papers again. "Due to his wife's affair I see."

"Do I appear hysterical?" Thomas says, trying to appeal to this man's rationality. Certainly, a doctor must only wish to attend to patients with real disorders. "This is a sham."

"No indeed, sir," Weston replies curtly, stepping closer. "My report does detail your father's story of your hysteria but we both know the real reason you are here."

"Politics is more dangerous than one might expect," Thomas says with derision.

"No, Lord Hamilton." Weston clasps his hands over the documents regarding Thomas low by his waist. "You are here because you are a sodomite." Thomas breathes in deeply but does not break their eye contact. "Your father would wish to spare your family such a mark in our registers, such a shame, but we are not ill informed here and we shall treat you accordingly."

"This is a sham," Thomas repeats but the look on the Weston's face tells Thomas there is no turning back now.

The man turns to two staff members dressed in gray. "Take him to Dr. Blake for his physical." He nods at Rogers. "Thank you sirs."

New hands grab Thomas' arms as Rogers flashes one final triumphant smile at Thomas on his way toward the front door. Thomas opens his mouth to protest, to try and tell Weston that this is a power play, this is politics, but Weston has walked down the hall without a backward glance.

"Wait –"

"Come along, sir," one of the staff members says. "Do not waste the Steward's time."

"Waste his –"

"You're lucky he even saw you," the other staffer says gruffly. "Your family must pay well."

"Yes..." Thomas says weakly. His father would pay well and money, as Thomas knows, speaks louder than almost anything.

They trio walks down the hall past offices. Lunatics roam the halls around them, most looking vacant and ill, several naked. Thomas spies one man taping his head against the wall in a rhythmic pattern.

"Should you not stop him?" Thomas asks as they pass.

"He'll only be at it again once we leave," the man on his right says, "why bother?"

Then they turn a corner and suddenly shove Thomas through a door. A man stands up from a desk without a word and begins poking and squeezing at Thomas. He grips Thomas' arm, makes an 'hmm' noise then looks up into Thomas' eyes, nodding. He grips Thomas' chin and tires to look into his mouth. Thomas pulls his head away but one of the men who brought him to the room roughly grabs both sides of his head so the man, who Thomas assume to be the physician, can stare into his mouth.

"Better teeth than most, a parliament son no doubt, an Earl maybe?"

"Not an Earl," Thomas retorts.

The doctor chuckles once as he walks around Thomas, pulls at his hair briefly, then grips one of Thomas' hands, turning it over. "Sound bones, very healthy." He walks over to his desk, picks up a pen from its ink well then write a few notes. He looks up again. "He should endure the treatment well enough."

"'Endure the treatment?'" Thomas repeats with surprise.

"Accepted," the doctor continues, not really looking at Thomas. "I see the family has paid for a proper bed and clothing; see him attired and put away."

"Now, wait..."

"The hair, sir?" the man on Thomas' left asks, none paying attention as Thomas speaks.

The doctor purses his lips at Thomas. "It is short enough, the hair stays for now."

"For now?"

"Off with you," the doctor says and Thomas' arms are grabbed once more as he is pulled backward out of the office.

They lead him down the white hall, high windows above them, and into another room.

"All right then," one of the orderlies says, "new clothes for you." He starts to pull at Thomas' coat. "Shirt, breeches… what about his shoes?"

"Now wait a moment!" Thomas retorts, trying to pull away.

"Do we have any shoes for him?" The other orderly continues. "So tall would have big feet, yeah?"

The first orderly keeps tugging at Thomas' coat, pulling it off him despite Thomas' protests. "Breeches might not fit him either."

"Then leave me my own clothes!" Thomas retorts.

Both orderlies laugh at Thomas then. The second orderly starts on Thomas' waistcoat buttons. "Wouldn't matter if they are short on him anyhow."

"Stop it!" Thomas shoves himself back, toward a low table in the room. "If you insist upon this I can change my own clothing!"

The two men stare at him for a moment. Thomas wonders oddly if they actually heard what he said. Then one of them throws the pile of white cloth in his hands at Thomas. Thomas catches them, a shirt and breeches. The cloth is linen, coarse, but they appear to be new. Apparently his own stockings and shoes will do, unless they mean to take them and leave him none?

"Suit yourself then, sir." The orderly's tone is obviously sarcastic. "Give you two minutes then we do it ourselves."

The two men turn to the side, looking away, but they do not leave the room. Thomas stands still for a moment. He cannot decide which thing to be more upset over. Then he breaks himself out of his stupor and removes his clothing quickly, pulling on the linen. He somehow knows that the 'two minute' allowance is not an idle threat. Thomas folds his own clothing into a neat pile and places it on the worn table behind him. He sees a cabinet in the corner, the door ajar and more white linen stacked on shelves.

"Right, let's find your cell."

One of the orderlies grips Thomas arm and pulls him back toward the room's exit. They walk back down the hall then up some stairs onto the second level. The smell instantly becomes worse. London itself carries with it a smell most full time residents become accustomed to. However, the smell of filth and shit, the unwashed man and decay, wafts over Thomas unmistakable. He gags for a moment as the trio continues to walk.

They pass by cells, the doors hanging open with a man each inside. Thomas notices some of them chained to the wall. One man lies face down on his bed clearly talking to himself. Another man paces back and forth, pulling at the short hairs on his head. He sees another staring straight at them through the door, not really seeing them, unmoving on the stone floor. A deep sense of pity and horror starts to fill Thomas' gut.

Suddenly a man screams behind them. They three of them turn as one. Thomas sees a man with a light beard and only a long dressing gown with holes in it run from his room, knocking into the walls.

"That man is –" Thomas starts.

"You got him?" the one orderly asks the other.

The second man sighs, lets go of Thomas, then hurries after the running patient.

"Come on," the remaining orderly says, turning Thomas down the hall and suddenly into one of the cells. "This is you."

Thomas stares around the room. A low, wood frame bed sits in one corner under a small window with a wire grill over it. In the opposite corner sits a small chamber pot. Apart from these two furnishings, the room is empty.

"This is…" Thomas cannot finish the sentence.

"Sleep there, shit there…." the orderly says needlessly. "Heh, lucky you got sheets. Anyway, we'll come round again for meals and your treatments."

"Treatments?" Thomas asks but the man already leaves the room.

The cell door remains open; no one comes in to ask him anything, to tell him anything. Thomas turns back to the room. He steps over to the bed and touches the sheets, the same linen he wears though the bedding does not appear to be straw as he feared. He turns in place, looking at the stone walls, the cracked chamber pot, the small window. A line of water drips from one section of the wall. He feels suddenly colder than the autumn weather. His breathing increases, wanting to come faster, to run away from him. Can this truly be happening?

Thomas receives some meager broth and bread for supper, which he manages to choke down, stiff and alone on his bed. The door to his cell closes and locks when they return for his bowl. Thomas has to clench his teeth together tightly to keep from screaming.

He lies on his hard bed, the one thin sheet over him and stares at the ceiling as the light fades. He hears the skittering of rats somewhere near; he finds himself turning to check the floor constantly. He hears moans, the occasional scream, from the cells around him. He wonders at the poor wretches confined here for a time until it begins to sink in that he is a poor wretch now too.

* * *

It is not until the next morning that he actually speaks to someone again.

"Thomas Hamilton?"

Thomas stands up as Dr. Blake from his admission waits in the door. "Yes."

"Well, we had best start straight away on your treatments."

"I do not think that is necessary," Thomas starts. "If you would allow me, I am not mad. This… sequestering me away here by my father is –"

"For you own good, Thomas," the doctor interrupts. "You will be calmed here. Your inappropriate proclivities can be purged from your mind here. We have many methods."

"No," Thomas says. "I am not some raving madman, not the hypochondriac or the –"

"Eccentric?" He raises both eyebrows. "Not a sodomite?"

Thomas shuts his mouth suddenly then takes a deep breath. "You have no proof of that. I will speak to a magistrate. The courts must –"

"Enough talk, Thomas, we must begin." The doctor turns out of the room as an orderly suddenly grips Thomas' arm.

"Stop." Thomas yanks his arm back. "If you would simply listen to what I say!"

"No fuss!" The orderly snaps. "You will listen to the doctor." He grips Thomas by the arm again, hard and tight this time so Thomas hisses in surprised pain.

The man pulls him from the room, back down the hall toward the first floor. The ceilings rises higher again, the light more piercing, and Thomas has to squint, not realizing how much darker his cell had been. Then they take him into a room with rows of tubs. He sees two men already submerged in water. At the far end of the room, he sees a larger apparatus built around one tub which allows for a flow of water to cascade over the man in the tub. Thomas hears, what he did not notice before, a low groan of pain from the man under the flow.

"We shall start with two cold baths a week until winter," the doctor says to the orderly, "as well as purgatives. We can start with balancing the humours. I shall check on your progress in a week."

Then the doctor turns and walks away from the pair of them, back down the rows.

"Wait!" Thomas calls and starts to walk after him. "I would speak to you. This is not –"

Then the orderly grabs Thomas' arm and pulls him back. "No, Thomas, leave the doctor be. He has more patients to see." He talks as if to a child. "This bath here is yours."

Thomas stares at the man. "I do not need…"

The man pulls at Thomas' shirt but Thomas steps backward. "Stop! I am not climbing into that tub and you need not handle me so."

"Thomas, we need your clothes off. You wish to be wet all day?"

"What?" Thomas scoffs and looks around for someone else to appeal to. He cannot understand why they will not listen to him.

"Come now." The man begins to try and take off Thomas' shirt again.

Thomas shoves his hands away. "Stop!"

Then the man backhands Thomas across the face. Thomas gasps in surprise, stumbling once. The man yanks Thomas' shirt over Thomas' head quickly while Thomas still blinks in shock. His teeth hurt from the blow and he finds himself clutching one hand at his cheek.

"Are you going to behave?" the man asks.

"You cannot do this…" Thomas retorts but his voice has lost some of its fire. This man will not listen to him.

The orderly forces Thomas out of his breeches and small clothes, then manhandles him naked into the tub. Thomas steps one foot in and cannot stop a gasp at the frigid water as he eases down. The orderly dunks him under once then Thomas breaks the surface again, sputtering and shivering.

"Freezing…" he mutters.

"It calms the mad nerves," the orderly explains.

"Calms?" Thomas says incredulously, his body shaking now.

Thomas tries to stand up, get out of this ice bath, but the orderly puts on a hand heavy on this shoulder. "Not yet, Thomas."

The man forces Thomas to sit in the cold for what feels like an hour. Thomas' legs start to numb, then his arms. He feels his mind fogging with the cold. Perhaps this is what they mean by calming? He blinks over and over, tries to recall speeches from Parliament to keep his mind sharp. Yet all he can concentrate on is the fog and some memory of snow.

"Up now, Thomas, there we go."

When he realizes he stands on the stone floor again, the orderly is already pulling Thomas' shirt back over his head and rubbing a towel briefly over his hair.

"I am…"

"You are back to your cell, or around the halls, come now."

They walk back toward Thomas' room, his movements slow what with his circulation catching up. Thomas understands the glassy look in some of the other patients' eyes now.

"There we are."

Thomas looks up at what must be his cell as the pair of them stop at the open door. Thomas cannot tell the difference yet except that this cell is empty. He turns to ask the orderly about the doctor again but the man already walks away.

"Sir, wait!" Thomas tries but he does not turn back.

Thomas is unsure what he is to do. Most patients appear to stay in their cells but some others he notices wandering the wide hall. Will no one stop him? Thomas turns and walks down the hall, some of the feeling returning to his limbs with each step. Each cell he passes bears the same features as his own in varying states of filth. Some beds have sheets, others to do not, some men are clothed, some in rags and even some naked. Few of them seem to notice or care about his presence as he passes.

He reaches a more open area, a few men looking out of windows. Thomas steps next to one.

"Pardon me…"

The man glances at him then back at the window.

"I am Thomas Hamilton, might I…"

The man turns and walks away from Thomas. Thomas considers following him but he has no idea the nature of the man's madness. He sighs and walks further down. He notices the man from yesterday who continuously knocked his head upon the wall. He continues to do the same beside one window. Thomas sees blood on the stone. He stops next to the man.

"Please stop," he says, "you are hurting yourself."

The man, dressed only in breeches, continues to tap his head on the stone. He does not slam it hard but he clearly has not stopped in some time. Thomas sees a bruise on his forehead leading up into his hair. Thomas reaches up and puts his hand against the stone where the man hits his head. He knocks his head against Thomas' palm twice then stills.

"There," Thomas says quietly. "You may stop."

The man blinks dully for a moment then his eyes tick up to Thomas. A low guttural sound starts to emanate from the man. Thomas frowns as the sound grows louder, not a groan but nor is it a scream. He stares at Thomas, the sound growing louder, until Thomas pulls his hand away and backs up a step. The man turns back to the wall and starts tapping his head against it again. Thomas watches him for a minute, the dull thud of his head against the stone causing Thomas' stomach to churn.

He steps away then turns down the hall toward his cell. He stops at one of the cells near his own. The man inside sits on his bed, clothes somewhat dirty but not in an obvious state of disrepair as some.

"Sir?"

The man looks up at Thomas. "Yes?"

Thomas smiles, pleased at someone genuinely replying to him. "I am Thomas Hamilton."

"Aye?"

"I have just arrived here and I find myself confused."

The man laughs. "Because you are mad? That does cause confusion, doesn't? Confusion is the mad."

Thomas clears his throat. "Not that, nor am I mad."

"Then why are you here?" The man tilts his head. "It's a madhouse."

Thomas purses his lips. "I might ask you the same, sir."

The man laughs again. "Oh, never said I wasn't mad but staying here long enough will make you plenty mad, I'll say. But if you're asking, seems I like a drink or two much more than they'd like and that makes me mad."

Thomas frowns. "That makes you an alcoholic."

"And you? Look too fine as now but they'll wring that out of you."

"I wanted to ask –"

"Just go on, you'll learn soon enough. I can't tell you nothing. None of it makes sense!" The man snaps, kicking the wall. "You get on!"

Thomas puts up a hand to placate the man's shouts. "I only wish to know about their treatments, what am I –"

"Leave me alone!" The man shouts again. "Think you'll learn something, think it'll make sense? Get on!"

Thomas backs up and leaves as the man asks, walking toward his own cell. He does not know what else he might do. Thomas sits back on the bed in his cell. He watches water drip down the wall. He stands on his bed and looks out of his small window. He tries to think of a plan, a way to end this ridiculous confinement. The doctors may know about him, about his private passions, but what evidence do they have; they have only his father's word, his suspicions. His father is a powerful man but he is not above the law. If Thomas could appeal to the courts, they could find the truth in his sanity and release him. However, they could also hang him.

It is not until after his mid-day meal of bread and something like meat – no breakfast to be had – that his orderly, by the name of Smith another patient tells him, returns.

"You have as emetics session, Thomas, time to go."

Thomas frowns, hanging on the word 'emetics' and how many meanings it could involve. "I am well; I do not need any 'session.'"

The man crosses his arms and walks into the cell toward Thomas. "Do I need to drag you, eh?"

Thomas stares at him for a beat then stands with as much dignity as he can manage. He walks around Smith and waits just outside the door. "Well then?"

Smith smiles, walks out and grips Thomas' arm again despite Thomas' ability to walk well on his own. He leads Thomas down to the first floor again, past the bath room and into another room with chairs and cabinets against the wall. He deposits Thomas into one chair. Another man walks over to Thomas, a glass of some dark liquid in his hand.

"Thomas?"

Thomas nods. "Yes?"

"Good." He holds out the glass, which Thomas takes. "You are to drink this." He picks up a tin pail and slides in forward in front of Thomas. "You will need this."

"What is it?"

"A pail."

Thomas frowns. "How witty."

"Drink it. It will help to balance out the noxious humours."

"What is it?" Thomas asks again.

"Drink it or I'll have to make you," Smith says from behind Thomas.

Thomas glances at Smith behind him then back to the glass in his hand. He would imagine they would not poison him. So Thomas takes a reluctant sip of the liquid. It tastes foul and he gags for a moment. He shakes his head but the man keeps watching him, so Thomas quickly chokes down the rest of the liquid. Then the man reaches out and quickly snatches the glass away from Thomas. Thomas frowns in surprise but before he wonders more, his stomach clenches. Thomas groans, bends in half and heaves into the pail laid before him. He grips the edge of the pail, gasping, heaving again until he thinks he might throw up blood. His stomach seizes still, feels like stabbing and Thomas reconsiders the idea of poison. Perhaps it is fortunate they fed him little, as there was less to void.

Finally Thomas is able to sit up again and speak. "What was that?" Thomas pulls in another deep breath. "Why would you give me that?"

"To balance the humours, as I said." The man looks over Thomas' head. "Smith?"

"Yes, sir." Smith slides Thomas' chair back from the vomit filled pail then grips his arm. "Come along."

He pulls Thomas up from the chair. Thomas almost snaps about his own ability to stand but finds himself weaker than he would expect as he rises. He feels lightheaded, swaying for a moment so he must lean on Smith. Then Smith walks them both away and out of the door.

Back on the second floor, Smith leaves Thomas in his cell, depositing him on his bed. Thomas breathes in and out, his stomach still queasy. He focuses on breathing, just breathing.

When night falls, he lies on his bed again – stiff, his back aching, an itch he cannot place as either the fabric of his clothes or perhaps insects. He watches the light change from a setting sun to a rising moon at his window. He finally allows himself to think of James. Will he listen to Miranda? Are they already gone, escaped and safe? Thomas breathes in slowly to keep the sorrow at bay. He had only just regained James again from his ocean to now have lost him once more. Thomas was only able to touch his hand, to see him in public and not in private. He was not given a last kiss; not allowed to hold James in his arms. Not much more than a day has passed and here Thomas lies alone, caged, condemned with Miranda and James far from him.

"Feels like twice as long," Thomas says to the darkness.

* * *

The days start to form a pattern. Thomas receives his two meals a day, meat, broth, bread, milk pottage, little else. He receives their so called treatments, two or sometimes more a day. He sits in freezing bathtubs, sometimes with ice clustered around him. They force him to drink stinking liquid which he vomits up again or worse. He lies each night on his hard bed unable to sleep only in small amounts; the bed pains him, the sounds of human suffering or rats crawling or dripping water wake him. He feels weaker each day and must force himself to walk around the space of his cell or in the halls so he does not turn incapacitated. He flinches at the filth – dirt and excrement and simple neglect. He knows he has been pampered by his status but the state he lives in now proves to be a perfect opposite.

Visitors sometimes tour the hospital, peering into cells, laughing at what they see. Thomas' door is always closed these days. Perhaps they fear he should attempt escape or be found too sane by the visitors? He sees men he knew, men from parliament, men who hardly recognize him now and the humiliation creeps under his skin despite Thomas' attempts to hold his head high.

Thomas finds himself staring out of his window as other patients do, looking at the small patch of green and dirt of one garden. He walks outside in the patient garden only seldom. It becomes a gift, the true sunlight without glass and mesh between him, the grass and gravel under his shoes. He finds it strange that the usual rank London air should smell sweeter what with the stench of inside Bedlam's walls.

The days turn into weeks with the same rounds of treatments which do nothing but break Thomas down. He stomach always clenches; it becomes difficult to eat with the knowledge he will lose it all soon. His clothing turns dirtier each day and he receives no others.

Every curative session Thomas asks, "May I speak to the doctor?"

Every time Smith or another man replies, "No."

Sometimes they do not even answer him, ignoring his words as if they were only mad ravings.

Thomas tries to talk to some of the other patients, to gain an ally or learn more about their own treatment. Most of the patients will not speak to him or make little sense.

Smith strikes him once when the man Thomas attempts to speak with begins screaming.

"Do not incite the other patients!" Smith commands him, blood at the corner of Thomas' mouth from the blow. "Don't think I won't chain you!"

Thomas has seen orderlies beating other patients, confining them to chains, even metal bars around their chest and neck so they cannot move. Can this be right? Should there not be a method more humane?

When Thomas objects, tries to come between a patient and a beating, the orderlies only throw him aside or repeat, "It is for their own good."

Thomas attempts to call on their reason, to show his own rationality.

"I am calm enough without this freezing water. Do you see me screaming or hitting my head upon the stone?"

"It is your treatment. Get into the water, Thomas."

He argues against the purgatives, the emetics. He tries to tell them they do nothing, they make him no better.

"If you think this is a cure I see no result." Thomas gestures to himself. "If anything you make me worse."

"It takes time, Thomas. Drink."

It starts to cause his teeth to grind, the use of his first name. He was never one for formality, for his title, to be touted as 'Lord Hamilton' by all. Yet here it is not a choice. Here he is 'Thomas' because he is their charge, because Thomas has sunk lower by their estimation. Thomas only needs his given name because he is sick, because he is mad.

After two months of endless days, nothing but weakness creeping over him more and more, he decides to put his foot down. He was not a member of the House of Lords, not a man who wished to pardon pirates and change a broken system, for lack of conviction. He is a man of ideals, a man of action and even in the lowest of places he can attempt to effect change, even be it just a benefit to himself for now.

The apothecarist Lewis, Thomas finally learned, holds out the usual drink but Thomas crosses his arms. "No."

Smith comes around his chair. "None of that, Thomas."

"No. I shall not."

"Yes, you shall," Lewis insists. "You must."

"I will not drink it. I have said it does nothing but cause me pain; it is no cure. I will not drink it."

Smith laughs. "Oh, you don't know pain yet, son."

Thomas frowns at Smith but stays fast, arms crossed. Lewis sighs, still holding out the glass. "If you do not drink it on your own, we shall force you."

Thomas shakes his head. "No. You will not."

Smith laughs then looks at Lewis. Lewis nods and Smith grips Thomas' arms suddenly, holding him tight against the chair.

"Wait, if you would –"

"Open your mouth," Lewis says as he moves close and grabs Thomas by the chin.

Thomas tries to turn his head away but Lewis forces it back, pushing the glass up to Thomas' lips. Thomas tries to pull himself out of Smith's grip, to twist away, but he has grown weak and Smith is strong. Lewis shoves the glass against Thomas' lips but he keeps his mouth shut.

"Come now," Lewis chides, "you've had it before."

"Here." Smith shifts one of his hands to cover Thomas' nose.

Thomas knows this will work; he will have to breathe eventually. However, having to put his hand on Thomas' face loosens Smith's grip on Thomas' arms. Thomas manages to pull one arm free, twists to the side and knocks the glass out of Lewis' hand so it shatters on the floor.

"Thomas!" Lewis snaps.

"All right." Smith hauls Thomas roughly out of the chair. He yanks Thomas to the side so his head collides with the cabinet. Thomas shouts in pain as the glasses inside rattle around.

"Careful!" Lewis snaps at Smith.

"Let's calm you down, eh?" Smith says as he pulls Thomas out of the room with Thomas' arms pulled tight behind his back.

Thomas tries to struggle. "Unhand me!"

Smith, however, does not reply, only pulls Thomas backward out in to the hall. He drags him down past men whose heads turn to watch them, clearly some sort of altercation. Then Smith pulls Thomas into the bath room down the line of tubs. He takes Thomas to the end of the room where the tub with the falling water waits vacant. Another orderly comes up alongside them as Thomas struggles.

"Trouble?"

"He needs a bit more calming."

"I do not," Thomas protests, "If you would only release me."

"Refused his medicine just now," Smith explains to the other man. "Broke a glass in fact."

"Right, strap him in."

Thomas' eyes widen. "I will not be put into that contraption. It does nothing but dull the senses. It is no cure."

"Calm now, Thomas."

Smith and the other orderly shove Thomas over the edge of the tub and push him down into the chair under the wooden spout. Thomas, however, has the benefit of height on both of them. He heaves forward with his shoulders so they stumbled off balance. Thomas manages to get one arm free and twists away from Smith.

He stands up again and half falls out of the tub, the other orderly still trying to control him. "I do not need this. I will not submit to it."

Smith comes back around the tub to grab Thomas' arm again. "Do not fight us!"

"I am not fighting. I simply ask that you listen to reason!"

The other orderly abruptly clocks Thomas in the jaw with his elbow. Thomas hears the crack and shouts in surprise, the pain acute. Then he feels a pinch on his shoulder. He turns to see Dr. Blake suddenly beside them pushing the plunger of a needle into Thomas' arm.

"Relax," he says.

Thomas opens his mouth to reply but his limbs turn to mush, his vision fogs and he falls.

* * *

Thomas wakes up in his cell with his wrists chained to the wall.

Dr. Blake stands in the doorway, papers and quill in hand. "This is most disappointing, Thomas."

"Why am I chained?" Thomas asks.

"You have turned violent, Thomas."

"Violent! I simply refused a useless treatment."

"Yes." The doctor looks up from his papers. "And we will not tolerate such behavior. Every patient here receives the same treatment. You are not excused."

"Nor am I 'cured' as you would say. I have nothing to cure. I do not require your treatments."

"We have decided to accelerate your treatments," the doctor continues as if Thomas' words went unheard. "We shall move on to bloodletting and other methods."

"Other methods?" Thomas parrots.

Dr. Blake only smiles. "Yes."

* * *

Two orderlies strap Thomas down on a bed in the doctor's office. They place a porcelain bowl under his arm and one of the orderlies waits with a small knife. They let his blood, a pint, perhaps more, until he lies weak, only blinking up at them. He hears the doctor talk of humours – black and yellow bile – of calming methods, of purging the psyche of unnatural behaviors but his concentrations wanes.

He asks oddly, "would you bleed me dry?"

They strap him down again and press hot metal to his skin, blistering and burning him. Thomas screams and struggles against the straps, smells the char of his own skin. He cries and asks them to stop but they continue speaking of pain bringing about restorative behavior.

Thomas thinks their actions only punishment, only pain, only a message to stop fighting back. He sometimes receives four treatments a day – blistering, vomiting, bathing, bloodletting – so by the time they drop him back on his bed and chain him to the wall again, Thomas sleeps from sheer exhaustion.

He shivers with the cold of winter, no warmer clothing or bedding to shield him. They shave his head and face talking of lice. He watches scars form in lines on his arms. He grows used to the presence of blood and scabs around his wrists or ankles.

If he tries to question anything now they simply beat him.

Thomas asks, "Why should you need to let my blood so often?"

The orderly with him, Jones today, smacks him across the face and shoves him down onto the chair. "Don't back talk now!"

Thomas asks, "Can we not have more food? A man cannot survive on broth alone."

The orderly who brought his meal, smacks Thomas back against the wall so his head cracks and he passes out without hearing a response.

When the doctor asks him, "Are you ready for your treatment today, have you had any of your unnatural sodomite desires since your last emetic session?"

Thomas replies, "You may call them unnatural but I have no shame."

Smith beats him three times with a short stick, snapping. "You should have shame!"

They lock Thomas in his cell every day now. They lock him in chains every hour he does not spend in treatment. Any protest or request he makes is ignored. He starts to fear the opening of his door.

He thinks of James. He thinks of James' cynicism, his surprise and disbelief at Thomas' plan for pardons to supposedly unpardonable men. Thomas wonders what James would say of this place? Would he have expected such violence in a place intended to ease suffering? Perhaps James would say it would be Thomas' folly to believe Bedlam meant to ease anything.

Thomas, because he can think of no other recourse, asks to speak to his father. "If you would give me paper and pen I could write him."

"And why would you need to speak to him?" Smith asks as they take Thomas to a cold bath once more now that winter fades.

"It was he who put me here, who felt I needed punishment. He can have me released; his revenge against me is done."

"Well now Thomas, see the doctor has spoken to your father."

Thomas stares in surprise as they pull at his clothing. "What?"

"His standing order is you're not to leave. We're to do what we can, what the doctor orders, but your father thinks you incurable." Smith steers him toward the tub. "In you get."

Thomas tells himself his father would not truly leave him here, not to such treatment, but another voice quickly replies, 'Of course he would. You are every disappointment he could have feared.' His father is glad to forget him.

Thomas realizes the monsters were never in Nassau, never on the seas, they were in London all along, in his own blood.

* * *

During the long hours locked in his cell alone, Thomas rereads Marcus Aurelius in his head. He dwells on _Meditations_ , recalls his own voice reading out the words to James beside him.

"'When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...'" he whispers to the James who is not there.

"'You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.'" Thomas chuckles. "An apt sentiment when one is chained."

He finds the more he remembers, the more he reads the absent book, that the words feel hollow, privileged from a man who did not know such pain.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, 'The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts,' which Thomas always thought true, right even, a sentiment to call a man to control the outlook and character of his life. Yet now as he sits in filthier clothes, in a darker room, pushed underwater, beaten, burned, ignored, how can his own thoughts improve his happiness when so much pain and sorrow grows tighter around him?

As the months drag on longer, five, six, the words become less and less distinct as he tries to remember each page.

"'It is not death that a man should fear…'" Thomas says to himself. "'But he should fear…' he should fear… imprisonment... a cage." Thomas shakes his head. "No… he wrote…" But Thomas cannot finish the line when there is so much to fear.

* * *

"Good morning, Thomas," says Dr. Blake as he comes through Thomas' cell door.

Thomas stays where he sits, motionless, non-threatening as if perhaps his inaction could allow him to disappear into the wall, unseen.

"What do you think of a purgative this morning?"

"No," Thomas says. "I am well."

"Are you?"

"Yes," Thomas repeats though he is anything but well.

"You are calm?"

"I am calm," Thomas replies though he is anything but calm.

He tries not to shiver, tries not to show the fear, the itching of his skin and the desire to run straight at the doctor, despite his chains, knock the man down and flee as far as he can. Thomas breathes in and out and waits as still as possible, close to the wall, waits for mercy or malice.

"Perhaps not today then, perhaps some solitude will calm you further, allow you to ponder on your unnatural thoughts and how you may atone."

"Yes," Thomas replies quietly, does not rise to the bait as he has in the past.

The doctor turns, walks back through the door and the turn of the lock sounds like church bells to Thomas' ears.

He wants to be brave, to keep his dignity and mind, but he cannot help the darkness of this place creeping inside him. When will this stop? When will he be free of this torture and fear? He wonders what could have possessed him to tell Miranda to stay away, to make her promise to keep James away? What idea of nobility or sacrifice could have made him believe he could survive this alone?

In his mind now a loop repeats – calling out to those he loves – ' _Come save me. Save me. Save me. Save me_.'


	2. Bedlam

AN: Warning for Non-con in this chapter.

* * *

After more than a year, as far as Thomas can tell, into his incarceration at Bedlam an orderly named Jonathan Peters enters Thomas' bleak world.

"Hello, Thomas," the new orderly says as he enters the cell. He has light brown hair with some premature gray, large eyes and a thin mouth set in a round face. He watches Thomas for a moment with an odd expression Thomas cannot place. Then he smiles. "You may call me Jonathan."

The orderlies rarely speak to him so formally, so like a person. Perhaps Thomas should have suspected then.

It starts slowly, yet Thomas notices something off immediately. The orderlies at Bedlam always treat the patients roughly. They grip with fists that bruise, push and pull to deter any questions or arguments. They let go of him as soon as they are able – throw him back into his cell, drop him into a chair or a tub of water – as if some of the madness should spread through prolonged contact. Jonathan is different.

Jonathan's hands linger. When he leads Thomas back from an emetics session, his hands stay on Thomas arm or his waist all the way from the procedure room, down the hall, and into his cell. His hands are firm but they are not harsh. Thomas finds himself shivering at the familiarity, the mere absence of pain from another's grip. It unnerves him.

Jonathan's words are far too kind as well.

"Good morning, Thomas. Are you well today?"

Jonathan asks questions, not simply gives orders.

"How is your head?" He touches Thomas brow where a bruise has formed. "I know Jones was not as obliging as he should have been yesterday."

Thomas cannot answer him at first, cannot repay the kindness. It feels too foreign after a year of Thomas' questions, his attempts at rationality, only earning him worse treatment.

"Come, Thomas," Jonathan says as he leads Thomas down a hall, looking at him with deep brown eyes, tall enough to be at Thomas' eye level. "You may speak to me. I shall not curse you for it."

Thomas fears a trap. How else can they call him mad? What other imagined symptoms will they add to the lists? What new 'treatments' might they find useful?

Jonathan is in fact a trap, just not the trap Thomas suspects.

* * *

Jonathan comes to Thomas cell every day; brings Thomas his two meals, takes him to every curative session and Thomas begins to see, to understand.

Jonathan stares at him no matter the situation. Thomas did not realize the attention to be so all encompassing at first. He thought, perhaps, the man simply kind, but that is not it. Whenever they are in each other's presence Jonathan stares. He takes any opportunity to watch Thomas. He watches as they hold Thomas down and bleed him until a bowl fills. He watches Thomas' face when they lock and unlock irons around his wrists or ankles. His eyes slide down Thomas' body when they pull him from his ice bath. His eyes linger on Thomas' exposed skin, the gap of his shirt or the holes in his breeches. Jonathan looks, stares and becomes more obvious each time he enters Thomas' space. His hands slide lower, linger longer. His fingers curl close to Thomas' neck; his hand slips across Thomas' stomach.

Then one day, when Smith leaves them alone in Thomas cell, Jonathan says, "I know the true reason for your stay here."

"My stay?" Thomas repeats incredulously.

"They say you were overcome with grief, a betrayal, and that was the start of your madness."

Thomas stares at those dark eyes, so dark they could be black in the dim light of Bedlam. "So they say."

Jonathan smiles. "That is not true."

"Is it not?"

"I know your tastes are not those of most men and I know that most would call that madness, call it grotesque and immoral."

"And what would you call it?"

"I would understand." His traces a line along Thomas' lips making Thomas recoil. Jonathan watches him still, his hand up in the air between them. "I would share such tastes."

Thomas wants to scream.

* * *

Day after day Jonathan presses closer, touches longer. Thomas wonders how no other can see Jonathan's obvious interest, his behavior. With the reason for Thomas' imprisonment known to the doctors and some of the staff, how could they not notice? He would imagine they would at least blame Thomas for such behavior, his wants infecting Jonathan perhaps. Yet no one says a word and Jonathan smiles on, longing in his eyes and wanting hands.

Somehow the gentle touch is worse, the affection, the softness.

Jonathan whispers in Thomas ear, "You feel better than a week past, stronger," his hands running over Thomas' arms.

Jonathan whispers, "If we had but a moment alone, instead of your cell..."

Thomas pulls away, tries to escape Jonathan's touches and words. He purposely knocks into other orderlies or shouts to cause them some annoyance so they yank him away. Thomas tries to ignore Jonathan's words, turns his head but Jonathan is sadly no fool. He turns Thomas chin, leaves the chains off and holds Thomas' hands.

"If we had but a chance…"

Thomas refuses, turns away. "I am not what you would seek."

He touches Thomas' face, holds his waist as if they are intimate, as if Thomas wants him there.

"You have the look of a lord, one still refined."

Thomas shuts his eyes, jerks away. "I am no longer a lord."

Jonathan smiles and stands close, as if they were in a dark parlor and not an earthly version of hell.

"If only I could –"

Until Thomas cracks, shoves with both hands, shouts in Jonathan's face, "I am not what you would have! Find your own lover. I cannot be what you want!"

Jonathan smiles wider and Thomas realizes his mistake; his reaction means that he understands and knows just what Jonathan wants. It is not just Jonathan speaking, asking, pleading; it is now Thomas truly answering. Thomas unintentionally opened a door for Jonathan, so Jonathan walks through.

* * *

Thomas sits in a bathtub. It is not an ice bath meant to calm his madness and bring supposed comfort to his suffering. It is a warm bath to clean him. The soap smells of lavender and reminds him of Miranda, her hair twisted with flowers walking through a garden somewhere. He can see her smile as she finishes his quote of Cicero, some line they have repeated together over years. He hears her laughing, calling him some name, something silly as though they were far younger than they are.

"You look a sight better without the dirt of this place."

Thomas turns his head to Jonathan crouched low beside the tub. Thomas sees a crack in the porcelain at the lip where Jonathan's hand grasps for support. He runs the soap down Thomas' chest in slow circles. Thomas finds some comfort in the warm water, the feeling of dirt washing away after so many months since they felt it necessary to allow him that. Yet such comfort is little help with Jonathan's hand bringing it to him.

"Smell far better now, that is sure."

Thomas cracks a reluctant smile. "One does adjust to a pungent nature when it is his every day."

Jonathan laughs once, the bar of soap sliding now over Thomas' back in his hand. "Doesn't mean you like it though, does it?"

Thomas frowns. "No."

Jonathan pulls the soap away, placing it to the side on a plate then he pushes slightly on Thomas' shoulder. Thomas sinks below the water, washing away the soapsuds. He thinks he could stay here under the water, muffled sound and murky depths until he drowns. Would drowning be like returning to James, the water and the sea he came from?

Then Thomas rises up again, gasping once and blinking away the drops running toward his eyes.

Jonathan pushes up the fringe of Thomas' hair; grown back some since they last cut it. "This place hasn't taken away your beauty. I can still see that."

"And?" Thomas replies harshly. He knows now is the time.

Jonathan shifts forward, both hands gripping the tub and his voice low. "I could get you better food. Time out of the chains. You could regain your strength."

"To what end?"

"My needs are simple."

"Your needs?"

"Desires."

It seems all so absurd to be having this conversation naked, sitting in water with his own dirt and the smell of soap mingling with the unavoidable odor of wretched life beyond the door.

"I know your desires," Thomas replies, staring at Jonathan's hands.

Jonathan reaches up and runs his hand over Thomas' bare neck and recently shaved chin. "Then share them."

Thomas jolts up out of the water. He climbs out of the tub on the other side away from Jonathan and stalks to the table where a new set of clothing waits for him. It is the first new issue of clothing he has had in more than a year and a half and he hates that it is Jonathan who brought it to him. He grabs the shirt and yanks it on over his head, no unneeded help from a bored orderly, no hands pushing him in the right direction as if he could not do so himself. He pulls on the small clothes and breeches, water making the fabric stick, and fumbles with the buttons.

This place has set him low, hurt him, broken him in places he did not know of but there must be a line, there must be something they cannot take away from him.

He hears Jonathan stand up across the room. "Dear Thomas…"

"What could you want from me?" Thomas says as he whirls around to face Jonathan again. "I have nothing here. No past. No future. Nothing of my own. Only a present changing by a turn of the lock and key, dragging on endless marked by pain and misery. I am absolutely bare! A shade of what I was. I cannot be what you want." Thomas waves a hand about the tiled room, white cabinets and three tubs in a row. "This is not some romance."

Jonathan chuckles. "It need not be romance."

"It need not be anything!" Thomas scoffs, a bit of his old voice – the voice of Lord Hamilton – breaking through. "Or would you have me be your whore kept where you can always find him?"

Jonathan's mouth drops open. "No! You are no whore!"

Thomas frowns. "Then what would you call it?"

"You are beautiful and elegant and desirable despite what this place has made you; you could not be –"

"Such praise does not change the nature of your request."

"I have not asked –"

"You wish to play such a game with me now? I am imprisoned here, it does not make me a simpleton and you know exactly what you do!"

"What's the ruckus?" Another orderly opens the door at the sound of Thomas' shouts. He looks long at Thomas then glances at Jonathan. "You all right?"

"Yes," Jonathan replies.

"All done?"

"Yes!" Thomas snaps before Jonathan can argue.

The orderly makes a derisive noise. "Don't be getting rough with me lad." He walks into the room and grabs Thomas by the arm, pulling him toward the exit. "Come on then." He glances at Jonathan. "Where's his cell?"

Jonathan stares at Thomas as they stop in the doorway. His expression is less defeated then Thomas would have hoped.

"This way," Jonathan says as he walks past them out the door and down the hall again.

* * *

"Good morning, Thomas," Jonathan says, as he does any day, then he adds, "How about a walk for some exercise?"

Thomas looks up at Jonathan from his thin mattress. The question is not a real question nor is it usual. He is given cures, taken to the apothecarist or perhaps the doctor when he deigns to visit the hospital. Thomas spends most hours of every day in the isolation of his room to 'calm' him, to 'clear his mind' or allow him to think on his evils of his 'deviation.' He is not allowed strolls around the hospital or outside anymore.

Thomas senses a trap. "A walk?"

Jonathan shrugs. "Unless you would prefer your solitude."

It is not really an offer. So Thomas stands and they leave the cell, Jonathan's hand secure on Thomas' arm. They walk past cells identical to Thomas' own. He sees men inside, some chained, some not, many curled back into corners, one scratching at the stone with bleeding fingers. They enter the open area at the end of the hall where other patients walk around aimlessly. Thomas thinks he may envy this simple freedom of movement now.

"You would rather not be here," Jonathan says as they turn a corner and enter another hall of cells.

Thomas does not reply; there is not a need.

"I can help you leave."

Thomas turns his head toward Jonathan before he can guard his interest. He looks forward again without a reply.

"Would you like that?" Jonathan's thumb rubs a line over the thin linen of Thomas' shirt, scars hidden underneath. "Would you like me to help you escape this place?"

Thomas tries to control his breathing but the very thought of freedom, of a room without bars on the door or a day without the sound of screams or chains around him, instead the fresh air of outside, makes his pulse gallop. He wants to say yes, he wants to beg but he knows nothing in this world comes free.

"For what?" He already knows the answer.

Jonathan smiles. "I would have you happy. You do not deserve this place."

"And you would help me escape?" Thomas narrows his eyes. "For what?" He wants to make Jonathan say it.

Jonathan laughs quietly and runs a hand over Thomas' hair. "You told me not to play games, did you not? Why play your own?"

Thomas wishes that Jonathan were not so intelligent. He wonders if the man had been born higher what a politician he might have made.

Jonathan, however, acquiesces to Thomas' ploy. "I want you, you know this. I have watched you for so many months. I cannot…" He breathes out slowly as they turn another corner. "If you help me then I can help you."

"Why not simply take what you want?" Thomas replies harshly. "You would not be the first within these walls to do so to a patient. Why give me anything?"

Jonathan sighs, this voice quiet. "Oh, Thomas…"

He says no more until they reach Thomas' own cell again. Thomas hesitates at the door. He knows he should refuse. He should reject such an offer; protect his pride, his honor, his soul, not allow this place to degrade him so. But he thinks of the arms he would rather have around him, the hands he would rather touch and hold, he thinks of a soft bed with ginger hair on the pillow, a smile and kisses he wants; he thinks of James, the man he needs and whom Thomas must believe would love him no matter his actions.

"Thomas?"

"Yes," Thomas says, turning his head to look Jonathan in the eye. "My answer is yes."

* * *

Jonathan leads Thomas down hallways and up stairs until the floors become cleaner, the doors less cell-like and into an empty room with two beds in each corner.

"An unoccupied staff room, not somewhere anyone would check," Jonathan explains.

"I see."

Thomas knows what is expected of him, what will happen now, but he did not expect this deep-seated dread.

Jonathan's breath is hot on the back on Thomas' neck, his hands insistent. "You do not know how long I've wanted this."

"I do."

Jonathan removes Thomas clothes while keeping his own, touches more than he ever has before, more bare skin than Thomas wants to give. Jonathan moves Thomas by this shoulders, pushes him down on the bed, straddles him so Thomas has to swallow bile, force himself not to fight. Jonathan's hand never stop over his neck, his hips, his inner thighs, Jonathan's lips over Thomas' chest as if this were romance so Thomas must shut his eyes. Jonathan puts his fingers in Thomas mouth and Thomas has to turn away.

Jonathan turns Thomas' head back. "I am saving you," Jonathan hisses in Thomas' ear. "Please, Please, you will like this."

Thomas tells himself he is paying for his escape. A mantra in his head repeats 'freedom, freedom, freedom.' Then Jonathan waits no longer, turning Thomas over, breath heavy with mumbled words Thomas does not wish to hear, Jonathan's hand pressing lower, insistent, too intimate.

James was not the first man Thomas ever laid with – kissed, held close, fucked, slept naked beside all night, pressed him into the mattress with thrusts and heavy breaths and passion – but James had been the last. Thomas had wanted James to be the last.

James is not the last.

Thomas wonders – through the pain, the thrusts, the hands on his thighs, the breath at back of his neck, the forced intimacy – he wonders if the price is too high. Thomas thinks, 'This moment is not forever.' He thinks, 'freedom, freedom, freedom.'

When Jonathan is spent, they lie together on their sides, Jonathan still mostly clothed and Thomas bare. Jonathan keeps an arm around Thomas as though they were lovers and not a near unwilling transaction.

"You are divine," Jonathan whispers.

"You have had want you wanted," Thomas says in as measured a tone as he can manage.

"Yes..." Jonathan runs his hands over Thomas' skin. "And hours yet. You will not be missed."

Thomas tenses, feels suddenly very cold. He had not thought of this. "You have had what you wanted," Thomas repeats. "You said you would help me in turn."

"Of course. Tomorrow." Jonathan leans closer against Thomas' back. "Tomorrow, but now..."

"No."

"Tomorrow, Thomas," Jonathan says in an attempt at a soothing tone, his hand rubbing over Thomas' chest. "But now..." he presses closer still.

Thomas swallows and fists his hands. His breath quickens with something like panic.

"Thomas," Jonathan pleads.

'This moment is not forever,' Thomas tells himself. 'Freedom, freedom, freedom.'

Thomas nods once and Jonathan turns him over again.

* * *

Freedom does not arrive the next day. Thomas sees only another orderly to bring him his two meals, not even any 'procedures' for the day. Thomas paces as far as he is able in his chains, watches the door for Jonathan. Jonathan does not come.

The next day they take him out for a purgative and Jonathan is there.

"You told me tomorrow," Thomas whispers as they walk him down the hall.

"Soon, soon."

"Jonathan –"

But then Thomas is in the room and bitter liquid is forced down his throat once more with the usual words of placation and 'for your own good' surrounding the clenching of his stomach. Thomas wants to vomit on Jonathan out of spite.

The next day Jonathan comes with Jones to take Thomas to his cold bath.

"Today," Thomas hisses in anger. "Tomorrow is today."

Jonathan nods as the other orderly takes the lead and unknowingly gives them space to talk. "I will leave you out of your chains once we return you to your cell. I can distract Bill then you will be able to steal his keys." Jonathan looks at Thomas then glances ahead of them at the ring of keys the other orderly carries. "From there it will be simple for you to duck out after us, patients walk all over; think you can remember the way out?"

"But if he must lock –"

"Bill is drunk most of the time; he will hardly notice the loss of his keys if I lead him on."

Thomas nods. "Good."

They reach the bathing rooms where two other men shiver in their tubs. Jonathan pulls off Thomas' shirt, his fingers grazing low. Thomas remembers the feeling of teeth and the sounds. For a moment he shakes so badly Jones starts to ask if Thomas is well enough for the treatment. Then Jonathan pulls his hand back and Thomas goes still once more.

"He is able."

They shove Thomas forward and into the icy cold water so he gasps aloud as he does most times. His teeth chatter as Jones pushes him under the water's surface for a moment for the full effect then allows him up again. Thomas gasps and coughs and shakes in the water thinking about sunshine and grass and even the dank smell of London outside air. This will be his last time in freezing water, the last time someone touches him with such intent. Thomas finds himself truly smiling for the first time since James returned from Nassau.

"Working, is it?" Jones says with a laugh and a shift of his feet so he has to lean back against the wall.

"Yes," Thomas replies shakily as he thinks of the sound of horse hoofs and the crackle of a fire, Miranda's voice in their salon, the red of James' beard, the pages of a book under his fingers.

"Wouldn't get me in there," Jones blathers on as he pulls a flask from a pocket and takes a drink. "Right not care how mad I was, can't stand the cold."

Jonathan chuckles.

Thomas thinks about feather pillows, roast chicken, flowers with bees buzzing, walking through Hyde Park with Miranda, kissing James in the dark of a foyer while music plays inside. He thinks of new shoes on his feet, a glass of wine, clean shirts, a green jacket with buttons, James in his uniform, James out of his uniform, Miranda laughing, Peter reciting Plato, candle light, moon light, the sound of wind through trees, his own voice happy, James' blue eyes, hair falling into James' face as he lies beside Thomas, James curled close around him.

"Time's done." Jones steps beside the tub and gestures with one hand. "Up."

Thomas stands obediently, water cascading down his skin. He shivers still but tries not to mark it. He need not worry about the next time. Thomas puts on his small clothes, already turned grimy once more, and allows Jonathan to pull Thomas' same shirt back on him.

He catches Jonathan's eye. "Now," Thomas whispers.

Jonathan only nods once as they turn toward the entrance to the bathing room and out back to Thomas' cell. They walk quickly down the hall. Once back inside his cell, Thomas sits down on the cold stone, does not put up a fight as he has sometimes just for the sake of fighting. He watches Jones by the door as he stares at his fingernails. The keys to the doors hang loosely at his belt. Thomas will easily be able to grab them as Jonathan said. Thomas turns and looks at Jonathan as he crouches low beside Thomas. Jonathan holds one of the wall manacles in his hand near Thomas wrist.

Jonathan hesitates. He stares down at the manacle for one more second, two seconds, three. He is supposed to flick the manacle closed around only air now, leave Thomas free. He is supposed to stand up and distract Jones to give Thomas the chance. Jonathan, however, stays still, unmoving. Thomas tries not to give way to fear. He needs to say something, anything to encourage Jonathan, to tell him what he is doing is right but Thomas cannot be overheard. Yet Jonathan still waits.

Thomas whispers, "Jonathan, now…"

Jonathan looks up at him. Thomas sees the decision in his eyes. Then the manacle clangs closed around Thomas' wrist once more.

"No."

"I cannot," Jonathan hisses in a whisper.

"No," Thomas repeats louder, tries to pull away and keep his right arm free but Jonathan grabs Thomas' arm tightly.

"I cannot let you leave."

"You swore to me."

Jonathan shakes his head, his face too close to Thomas'. "I cannot let you leave when you are all mine here."

"No!" Thomas shouts, a pit opening in his stomach, the hope he should not have fed shattering like glass. "No, please!"

Thomas yanks his arm back, tries to pull Jonathan off balance but Jonathan has worked at Bedlam for years and Thomas is far from the most violent man within these walls. Jonathan compensates, leans into the motion toward Thomas, his one hand briefly caressing the skin at Thomas' neck making Thomas shudder. Then Jonathan wrangles the other manacle around Thomas' right wrist, forcing it closed and locked with the iron key.

"No!" Thomas shouts again, pulling at the chains, nearly head butting Jonathan who just stands up out of the way in time.

"All right?" Jones asks as Jonathan comes back over.

"Nothing I can't handle," Jonathan replies casually then looks back at Thomas again with a small, fond smile.

"No!" Thomas shouts at him as Jonathan walks out through the cell door taking the sunlight and the world and hope with him. "You coward! You swore to me! You bloody coward!"

"Quiet now, Thomas," Jonathan says.

Thomas, however, shouts on, pulls at his chains so they bite and make his wrists bleed. "You swore to me, Jonathan, you coward! You swore!"

The door shuts, the lock turns loudly and Thomas screams and screams. "Coward! Coward! Coward!"

* * *

Some barrier inside of Thomas, some wall he created to maintain the civility and conscience he once had, crashes down with a force. From that day forward, every moment Thomas occupies the same space as Jonathan – the same room, the same hall, the same air – he fights.

When Jonathan and Jones come to collect Thomas the next day for his daily ice bath, the moment his hands are free from the wall manacles, Thomas punches Jonathan in the nose.

Jonathan stumbles back. "Bugger!"

Thomas has never hit another man before, never punched someone in the face. His knuckles stab with the pain of bone on bone but the blood he sees dripping from Jonathan's nostrils eclipses any pain.

"Oi!" Jones shouts and slams Thomas back into the wall. "Don't you fight us, now!"

Thomas only grins wide at Jonathan who stares back at him in shock, his mouth agape and hand pressed against the flow of blood. Thomas hopes he broke it.

"Come on now," Jones says, pulling Thomas by his arm. "None of that!"

When Jonathan reaches with one hand for Thomas' other arm, Thomas lashes out with his elbow. He barely grazes Jonathan's hand, what with Jones holding his other side but his intent is plain. It is Jonathan he wishes to harm.

"One more and I'll give you the chest restraints, eh!" Jones snaps, smacking Thomas across the face as he tugs him toward the door. "Or maybe you need an hour in the bath, yeah? Cool you down."

"You may try," Thomas retorts but he stares at Jonathan as he says it.

He bites Jonathan's hand when they force him into the tub. Thomas draws blood which only makes him laugh loudly, manically, like the other mad men in the halls around him. Jones curses as he forces Thomas' head under the water but Thomas keeps smiling despite the painful cold; he keeps laughing at the betrayal on Jonathan's face.

The violence in himself surprises Thomas. The anger does not surprise him, this fevered rage. Thomas has felt anger in his life – anger at his father, anger at parliament, anger at good sense being a rare commodity, anger at the world, even anger at Miranda or James at times. He has experienced the full range of emotions as any man has. However, he has never let anger rule him. He has never allowed it to bloom into violence. He has always found such naked violence repugnant. Thomas once believed himself simply devoid of violence.

Yet, all men can be pushed into violence given the right situation, the right triggers, given enough time. Thomas should never have considered himself better than such base behavior. Maybe he needs it now to survive.

When Jonathan crouches low and speaks to Thomas in soft tones, "please, Thomas, understand that I only care for you and –"

Thomas cracks the top of his skull into Jonathan's chin so Jonathan nearly falls, curses and flees Thomas' cell.

Thomas thinks the violence is his escape from his wrongs. If reason and patience will not win him freedom then violence may gain him a level playing field.

"I will pay you back in kind."

Thomas does not relent in his attacks toward Jonathan. When the doctor comes with Jonathan as his orderly to assess Thomas' state, Thomas grabs the doctor's pen and stabs Jonathan in the arm, a perfect puncture wound that makes Jonathan scream. Thomas earns a beating and a week alone chained by the neck.

When Jonathan and another orderly, Harrison, try to bring him for a purgative session, Thomas manages to use his full body weight to slam Jonathan into the door of his cell so the metal lock leaves a rip and a gash in Jonathan's side. When they take him for another bath on another day, Thomas manages a head butt that knocks them both down with the force of the blow. When they try to administer laudanum to quiet him, Thomas manages to kick to Jonathan's shin before the world blurs. When they take him for more 'healing' cuts and burns, Thomas leaves four deep scratches in Jonathan's face despite their best efforts to hold him fast.

Jonathan feeds him when they bind Thomas' hands, his fingers caressing Thomas' cheek and neck. "Thomas, I only wish to keep you safe and close because I adore –"

Thomas savagely bites Jonathan's hand so Jonathan falls onto the stone with a scream. He holds his wounded hand tight against the blood, staring.

Thomas spits out the blood in his mouth. "I may still be trapped here, but you cannot have me!"

Thomas earns a scar he cannot see on his back from the point of a cane. They bind him with metal bars across his chest so he cannot stand up or raise his arms. They let his blood in an effort to remove the overabundance of such foul humors to the point of unconsciousness. They leave Thomas weak, incapacitated so he has no energy to fight. They force laudanum down his throat again and again to make him slow and safe and quiet. Thomas gains new scars on his ankles from the manacles they fasten too tightly for a month. They leave him in the ice baths longer to calm him; force him into weeks of seclusion to allow quiet and darkness to 'ease his mind.' Thomas' head hits the wall when the orderlies retaliate in defense of their comrade. Thomas bleeds for his actions; his violence repaid with violence.

"Please, Thomas," Jonathan begs him from a safe distance. "You cannot keep this up. I am the only one who cares about what should happen to you!"

Thomas strains against his chains then frowns with a shake of his head. "Your care is not the kind I want."

Thomas laughs at Jonathan's pain. He struggles every time they try to keep him away, he kicks and shouts and growls and acts every bit the raving madman. Perhaps he is half-mad but if he is mad then it is because Jonathan made him so. Nothing is as cruel as giving hope to one who is hopeless then tearing it away again.

They hit him with fists and short clubs and long switches as if he were a child. They say over and over, "you must stop, Thomas," "calm yourself, Thomas." He will not stop, not this time. Hurting Jonathan is all he has.

Thomas wonders how he would explain this feeling to James. James is a sailor; Thomas is not so naive to think James has not witnessed or even himself been party to brutal violence. Almost as soon as they met, the first thing James did was take Thomas to witness a hanging. But in James' eyes Thomas knows he was better, something pure. Thomas would not make such an assertion himself but he knows we often see the best in those we love. What would James see in him now? Would James think him truly mad?

The focus of Thomas' aggression is not lost on the other orderlies or even Dr. Blake despite his infrequent visits. Perhaps the Hamilton money earns Thomas a more regular focus.

"Thomas, why do you continually attack Peters?"

It is strange to hear him called 'Peters.' Thomas never refers to Jonathan by his last name even in thought. Jonathan introduced himself familiarly at once. He took away that defense of formal distance from Thomas.

"You should ask him."

"You do not try to hurt any other orderly nor myself," the Dr. Blake continues. "So why Peters?"

The doctors rarely ask him questions. They give orders; they tell him what will heal him; they command him into cures or treatments. They do not ask his opinion or inquire as to what might ail him. Perhaps Thomas should be satisfied now that they deign to listen.

Thomas stares at Dr. Blake from his low bed, atop threadbare sheets, only ankle manacles now. "We have a difference of view."

"The mad have a very different view to be sure."

Thomas taps his fingers over the metal on his ankles. "Ah yes, and I am mad, am I?"

Dr. Blake raises his eyebrows. "This is Bedlam."

"Indeed it is but are the mad those in the cells or those with the keys?"

"You must stop attempting to harm orderly Peters," the doctor says with his commanding tone once more. "It will cease."

Thomas replies in his lord voice, a tone which should be beaten out of him but is fueled by his anger. "No, it will not."

Finally, the hospital administration changes Jonathan's responsibilities. Thomas never knows where they move Jonathan, a new wing, new patients, perhaps even a different madhouse but Thomas never sees him again. So Thomas stops. The violence leaves him, the anger sated with the subject's absence.

* * *

It is not until Jonathan leaves – until the vengeance and the violence seep away – that Thomas realizes how much he had come to depend on that each day. He may be living in hell but he could react, he could fight with Jonathan as his object. Now… now he has nothing left, no hope, no purpose but to be trapped, chained, and caged. He has nothing left but his desperate sorrow.

* * *

Thomas' life in Bedlam continues in a dismal routine, treatments that do nothing but torture him – water and drugs and curatives, vomit and shit and blood and even beatings, voices that talk at him and never to him. He spends hour after hour alone in his stone cell, just his bed with worn sheets against the cold and metal chains to share the space. Some weeks, isolation is his cure and he sees no one at all, not even for meals which come through the door by only a hand.

He tries, somehow after more than two years he still tries, to speak to his captors.

"Have I not been here long enough?"

They never truly answer him.

"Does my father deem my punishment everlasting?"

They look past him, pretend not to hear. Perhaps they do not actually hear his words, just another madman. Maybe if he chose to scream instead they would listen? And he wants to, he wants to scream.

He replay memories in his head of life before captivity. He sees Miranda –

" _Thomas, you cannot always play Devil's Advocate."_

 _He smiles at her as she gathers up the papers from their most recent salon, their guests gone now._

" _And why not?"_

 _She smirks. "I suppose you can but must you?" She blows out a candle along her rounds. "If you do not believe the side you argue?"_

 _Thomas stands up, following her path around the parlor. "It is a mental exercise, is it not? If I can argue an opinion I do not hold then at least I understand it."_

" _I would not imagine there is much you could not debate, Thomas."_

 _He laughs and catches her hand. "Hmmm. I would have difficulty debating someone who would argue you a lacking wife."_

 _She scoffs, pulls her hand away and touches his cheek. "I imagine they could argue something about infidelity and break all your fond assurances."_

 _Thomas still smiles at her. "But then they would not have all the facts, would they?"_

 _She smiles, kisses him once then leads them to the parlor door. "No and I would rather they live in mystery as to why I adore my husband for what he is and not what they see."_

" _And what do they see?"_

" _Not what I see."_

He misses the feel of things other than stone and metal. He misses the leather binding of a book, the polished wood of a table, the softness of sheets. He misses holding a fork and knife, of lighting a candle and feeling the heat of the flame. He worries he will begin to forget what the world outside this place feels like. Should he touch something and not remember it? Will he forget how James feels under his hands, under his lips, close and wrapped around him? Will he forget James' skin against his own?

He tries to remember details – freckles along James' back, the fall of his hair, the different ways he would smile, clothes on, clothes off, the expression on his face when they first kissed beside his long dining table. He tries to remember the James which no one else saw but he.

" _Sometimes I imagine you smell of the sea."_

 _James laughs quietly, his face half in the pillow. "Perhaps you do not imagine it."_

" _You likely smell more like sex just now."_

 _James laughs again and turns his head toward Thomas. He smiles – the smile of privacy and forgetting the world which would repulse them, the smile of just they two – and he traces his hand down Thomas' arm._

" _You a sailor," Thomas continues. "I think the sea would be inherent in you, no matter where you are or how long on land. The sea would simply follow you."_

" _I think you like to speak poetically."_

 _Thomas grins, twists his ankles around James' under the blankets. "Perhaps I do but perhaps you are the one who is filled with salt water, perhaps you are my mermaid."_

 _"Not a maid."_

 _Thomas grins more, thinks of the two of them not long ago breathing hard and moving together with hands mapping skin and kisses turned sloppy. "Certainly not but still, a product of the sea." He runs his hand through James' red hair. "Sunset over the ocean perhaps, something deep…"_

" _I would happily leave the sea behind if I had you on land forever." James leans in and kisses Thomas, whispers his name. "Thomas…"_

Thomas gasps as they pull his head out from the water again. He feels ice as if it were in his very veins. He sees other patients in the long tiled room, men who look more weathered than he, older, worn, who could be his own age. Then again, he has not seen his own image in some time now. He could appear worse than they.

"Do you see me a broken man?" He asks to whomever is near – an orderly, another patient, anyone. "Am I but a shell now?"

A man in the next bathtub turns his head toward Thomas, his face almost expressionless. "We are all broken here."

Thomas stares at the man. He wants to ask what brought the man to this place. Is he truly mad or did he simply wrong someone? Has this asylum drive him mad instead?

As they pull Thomas from the bath, he pulls his arms away. "I am not an invalid! I can move on my own."

They do not listen nor let go as if he were merely a doll. He wonders if that is what they aim to make him, a living, breathing doll to simply fill a cell. He will not become a doll; he must prove he is a man, alive.

"You could ask me to stand, are you not able to address me?"

"Come now, Thomas," the orderly only says, not listening to his words at all, "do not make a fuss."

They do not hear him.

* * *

Thomas thinks the time will never end. He will disappear into the walls, into the indignity, into the pain.

He starts to scream with the other lunatics because if they will not listen, if he has to no other recourse, then why not let the madness take him too? He screams at the walls, at the door, at the very air, until orderlies come to try and quiet him. They beat him with sticks, with clubs, with the very chains that bind him.

"Do you think it can't be worse?" One orderly hisses at him. "It can be worse!"

He watches bruises form on his arms, tastes copper in his mouth and thinks perhaps he should scream so they beat him until there is nothing left but pulp. What is the point in health or sanity when he lives here? Even his screams bring him no solace, no release, only more blood and more scars.

Thomas tries to remember James' scars. He had only a few; life at sea and the navy had not left him untouched. Perhaps he has more now wherever he might be out in the world? Thomas' scars would surely outmatch James' now, the crisscrossed lines around his wrists and ankles. Would James be repulsed by his newly haggard appearance, not the fine gentleman that James once knew?

He remembers so many fine nights, James in his arms, his eyes, his hands, and his voice. Will Thomas forget James' voice?

He thinks about James at a party. Thomas always entertained and he cared not what others might say about a cross section of classes.

" _Your friends think me ill-suited for such a gathering."_

 _Thomas stands beside James out on the dark balcony, the sounds of his guests further away in the ballroom. "And you know how much I care for such opinions?" James only looks away. "I find nothing shameful in having you here."_

 _"Perhaps you should."_

" _I never will." James looks at him then. "I have nothing to be ashamed of with you."_

 _James mouth pinches. "Thomas… you and I…"_

" _James," Thomas interrupts and steps closer so he may run a hand down James' arm. "I know what the world would think of us. I know your concerns but I will not be ashamed of you. I will not be sorry for what we have."_

 _James chuckles. "And what do we have, a dark balcony?"_

 _Thomas' smiles twitches and he threads his fingers with James'. "We have this. We have what we feel." Thomas steps closer, kisses the corner of James' mouth. "I have your lips and you hands." He nuzzles his nose into James' cheek. "I have you and you have me and we are not something wrong."_

 _James sighs but does not pull away, does not protest. He only says, "Yes."_

 _Thomas pulls James by the hand, leads him from the balcony out into the garden. The moon shines half full, a small smattering of stars bright enough to shine through the haze over London. Thomas watches James walk through the maze of bushes, his hair perfect, his coat rustling as he walks, his eyes glancing over his shoulder every so often at Thomas behind him. Thomas thinks of poetry, thinks of Greek myth and Roman warriors, he thinks of angels that would never look as fair to him._

" _How I love you, James," he says._

 _James stops, pushes Thomas into manicured bushes and kisses him, kisses him over and over, runs his hands down Thomas's sides, his hips. James whispers, "Oh Thomas..."_

" _My James," Thomas whispers back._

 _In that night he thinks that months are as long as years, hours as blissful as days, the night as illuminating as any sun when those blue eyes stare at him, when that smile is for him, when those lips touch his and that body presses warm on his own. Thomas wants only James in that moment, not another thing in the world._

But Bedlam is Thomas' world now, not a blissful night.

"And what cure would you give me today?" Thomas says through the dimness of his cell to the orderly standing near.

Smith, laying a tin dish of food beside Thomas, jumps in surprise. "Thomas!"

Thomas blinks slowly. "Yes?"

"My god, you gave me a fright, yea bastard."

Thomas frowns. "I am right before you and chained why should I cause you alarm?"

"You have not spoken in a month, Thomas, of course you scared me!" Smith sighs heavily as he shakes his head and leaves the cell.

Thomas watches the door and realizes he has no idea of the day, the month, the year even. He has not spoken in a month? Has he only lived in that memory of James, circling it around for so long? He cannot decide if such knowledge is a blessing or a curse; is it better to be aware or let himself slip back into the memory and live there? He finds himself terrified at not knowing the answer.

* * *

Visitors crowd Bedlam most around the holidays. Many classes find amusement to travel with their family during times of joy to jeer or learn from those in such a state of mental and physical misfortune. After so many days of visitors during his incarceration, Thomas barely notices them. He thinks of other voices or other places when visitors press their faces in the window of his cell like eager children hoping for a treat.

Thomas instead watches James dancing with Miranda in their lounge, her gentle voice as she childes his clumsy steps. Thomas wondered then if James miss-stepped on purpose just to hear her correct him.

"What could our life have been…" Thomas says aloud or perhaps only in his mind, he is unsure.

He, James and Miranda on Nassau. Thomas and Miranda would live in the Governor's mansion, James with a house just nearby for some contrived reason. James would sleep there but rarely. The three of them would change the island for the better, make it a beacon of reason and freedom. Perhaps a man could love whom he chose on that island under Thomas' direction as governor. How much would England care for so far flung an island?

"Read in the evening, the hot nights…" Thomas says, a swirl of possibility never to happen. "Sea water, salt… like you, James, a man of the sea…." He smiles and does not feel the metal around his wrist but feels kisses, slow and deep and long lost.

Miranda at the fire composing an essay on the nature of women in the world, their place as not just wife and mother but intellectual. James seated at Thomas' feet so Thomas may run his hand through that auburn hair. A sunset Thomas watches through their window – red and gold and the ocean beneath it and pain far away – with the only ones he cares for in the world safe around him.

"Lord Hamilton?"

Thomas blinks because the voice is not his own, not in his head, not in his dream of Nassau.

"It is you, Lord Hamilton… oh God."

He blinks again and focuses on a face at his door… a stone door… his cell door… his barred door in his cell in Bethlem Royal Hospital. The face at his window is a woman, a young woman. She could not be more than eighteen.

"Yes?" Thomas replies.

She makes a sound like a strangle cry. "Lord Hamilton, you knew my father. He… he visited your home. He had told me of your… troubles."

"My troubles."

"How your wife and Lieutenant –"

"Ah yes," Thomas interrupts, unwilling to hear James' name on another's lips. "Driven to such despair over my betrayal."

"When your father lived, he spoke of how you could not be consoled. My father said –"

"What did you say?" Thomas interrupts, standing up from his bed against the wall.

She continues, "Your extreme grief, he said, drove you over into –"

"No," Thomas interrupts again, "what did you say of my father? You said, 'when your father lived?'"

She shuts her mouth and pulls back so Thomas cannot see her for a moment, only his usual view of the hall wall beyond his door. Then she appears again with what looks like streaks of tears on her face.

"I… I should not be the one to tell you such –"

"Tell me," Thomas commands.

"He and your mother, Lord Hamilton, they were both killed by pirates on the seas. They were crossing to the American colonies and a pirate ship under a Captain Flint boarded their ship." She makes a sort of hiccupping sound as though she cannot breathe through tears. "It was a slaughter they say… the newspapers wrote…."

"He is dead." Thomas' eyes shift away, his thoughts clearer than many months. "My father and mother both dead."

"I do apologize for your loss; that you should hear from me in a place such as this…"

Thomas laughs, sharp and sudden. He moves quickly toward the door, stopped only by his chains. He sees the girl start backward in surprise. "If they are dead then I am free!"

She moves closer again with a frown on her face. "Free?"

Thomas smiles, tries to reach the bars but his chains do not allow him that far. "It was my father who put me here, who kept me here. If he is dead, I need not stay! I can be released!" He laughs once more – what should anyone else care for the trumped up reason of his father's politics after so long; Thomas can certainly cause no one else such harm and need not be locked away. "I can leave. I could leave!"

"No, Lord Hamilton, you must stay here," she says with a sad expression.

Thomas shakes his head. "No, you do not understand. Without him, I can leave. I can –"

She makes a sympathetic noise that cuts off Thomas' assertions. "Of course you cannot leave, Lord Hamilton, you are mad."

"But… I am not…"

"No, Lord Hamilton, you are quite mad."

Thomas stares at her, suddenly sees himself in her eyes – shaved head, dirty clothing, pale in the darkness, locked away, utterly insane – and he begins to laugh and laugh and laugh.

* * *

Sometimes Thomas believes James was just something he imagined. To be assigned a true love from the admiralty that loved him back? How could he be so lucky? A perfect man, bold and principled and challenging, beautiful and wanting as he did. "Could such a man be real?" Perhaps Thomas is mad but not for the reasons they claim.

Sometimes Thomas talks to the stone walls, as mad as the men in the cells surrounding him. "It is right I am here, James. I began it. I led you to this danger. Without my kiss you may have lived on in ignorant bliss."

Sometimes Thomas scratches at the stone as if he could carve his weaknesses, his apologies with only his fingernails. "I am the one who deserves madness for what I nearly cost you, my dear."

* * *

Then they leave him in true isolation, seeing no other soul or leaving his room for two months. Thomas stops fighting – arguing, talking, hoping, thinking – and Bedlam consumes him whole.

* * *

One day a man comes into Thomas' cell. He is not Dr. Blake or the apothecarist. He is not an orderly, not Smith or Jones or even Jonathan, not dressed like an orderly. He is something else, something wearing green and gold, smelling of flowers, of cleanliness, of the outside. He crouches low at Thomas' level, an expression like pity or revulsion; it is hard to say.

The man grips Thomas by the shoulder and says his name, says "Thomas?"

It takes him a time, Thomas could not say how long – time passes in spurts and sags to him now, are minutes not the same as hours, days as long as years – but the face in front of him changes, it sparks something, it brings up memory. He remembers this man. He knows him.

"Thomas," the man says again with more urgency and Thomas remembers.

"Peter," Thomas whispers.

"Yes, Thomas." Peter breaks into a wide smile. "It is Peter."

"Peter…" Thomas repeats and suddenly he grips Peter's arms as if Peter is a raft in Thomas' engulfing ocean. "Peter!"

Thomas pulls Peter close into a hug. Thomas laughs once, feels tears in his eyes and grips the fine fabric of Peter's coat in his dirty hands. He clings onto Peter, unwilling to let go should this mirage of a man disappear and leave Thomas in hell once more. He has not seen a friendly face in so long. Thomas thinks for a brief moment that perhaps he feels happiness.

"Thomas," Peter pulls back despite Thomas' tight grip. "It is all right."

"Peter, do not leave, please…"

Peter shakes his head. "It is all right, Thomas." Then Peter says the words that Thomas never thought to hear, "I am here to take you out of Bedlam."


	3. The Crossing

Thomas Hamilton sits in a small carriage on his way to the docks. His friend, Peter Ashe, sits across from him. Thomas' wears new clothes, not fine but not twice used linen either, a pale brown without any decorative trim. He wears fresh stockings, new shoes, metal buttons on his vest and coat. His hair is washed and his face clear of any dirt or grime. He is a man once more and Bethlem Royal Hospital no longer owns him.

It took Peter a month after his appearance in Thomas' cell to obtain Thomas' true release. During those long weeks Thomas almost thought Peter's appearance merely a dream until they unlocked his chains and walked him out the building door. He saw neither Dr. Blake or any orderly he knew as he left. Thomas might have ran straight past the gardens and to the streets beyond had he such strength left.

"It is to be believed you took your own life," Peter explained when they left. "Your father may be dead but his influence remains. I could not release you publicly."

"Why should anyone care but my father as to what happens to me now?"

"You may think yourself lost," Peter said, "but your influence has not entirely vanished. Your views remain with some."

"And should I be free in truth the 'criminal' reason for my imprisonment would be known?" Thomas finished.

"They would still consider you a criminal, yes."

"Then what choice have I, Peter?"

"You shall disappear."

Peter fed Thomas meat and fruit and vegetables, food that tasted real and not like death; allowed him rest on a feather bed with warm sheets and soothing pillows. Thomas woke naturally with no chains on his wrists and sunlight through large windows which opened at Thomas' touch. Thomas bathed alone, over and over, until his skin felt raw and fresh, until he felt new. He had a small moment of freedom.

Now they ride together toward Thomas' new jail.

"I wish I could do more but I only obtained your release through this man, Oglethorpe. His plantation in the colonies is a place for men of your situation."

"My situation?"

"Those perhaps wrongfully imprisoned or mistreated in England."

Thomas watches Peter, his gaze wandering away from Thomas' eye. "Unwanted embarrassments perhaps?" Thomas guesses. "Other noble and gentry sons their families would rather lose?"

Peter swallows and looks out the carriage window.

"I see." Thomas rubs one hand around his wrist, feels scar lines over his skin. "And what is this new place exactly?"

"A sugar plantation." Peter glances at him with a tight smile. "I suppose you shall learn to farm."

"You have not been there?"

"I live in Charleston now. It is further north. I am the local Governor."

Thomas purses his lips. "Strange where life leads one."

Peter looks away again. "Yes."

Thomas watches Peter. He appears older, new lines on his face and a different wig. His clothes are the same cut as before, grand but reserved. He wears a muted green with similarly muted accents. Thomas wonders if this is colonies fashion or if Peter wishes to avoid being seen, blending into the background. Is Thomas truly being rescued or is he being stolen? Is this just leading to another dark cell across the ocean?

However, Thomas has something else he would know, something he must know most of all, something he has not been able to ask until now.

"Peter." Peter's eyes tick to Thomas. "Where are James and Miranda?"

Peter looks away quickly. "They fled London, just as your father intended."

"And?"

"And I have not seen them since."

"No?"

Peter glances at him then looks out the window once more. "No."

"Peter, where are they?"

Peter huffs with a deep frown. "What does it matter, Thomas? You are bound for the colonies now, you are not really free. You could not find them even if you wished."

"I could." Peter turns sharply at the sudden fervor in Thomas' tone. "Should you tell me where they are I could leap from this carriage right now. I would go where ever I needed to go. You do not know the things I have endured, what I have done, what I have suffered these years, Peter, and I have suffered alone. I lost them. I lost myself." Thomas stares hard at Peter wanting to bore every horrible memory into Peter's brain so he truly understands. "While I am grateful for your actions," Thomas continues, "I will not be denied this one question which I know you know. Tell me what happened to them. Tell me now!"

Peter stares at him. He swallows once, his lips pressing together tightly. Then he sucks in a breath. "They are dead, Thomas. Miranda and James are dead."

Thomas blinks slowly. "Dead..."

"They died at sea... pirates." Peter rubs his hands together. "I am sorry."

"When?"

"Some time ago."

Thomas opens his mouth again but no sound comes out. His eyes shift, staring at the empty space between them in the dim carriage. He breathes in and out, his finger tracing a line over a scar on his wrist, he breathes in and out.

* * *

When they reach the port, the driver of their carriage insists upon manacles for Thomas.

"I am sorry," Peter says in a hush, "you are not the only prisoner on the ship bound for Savannah. If you were to not have them... it is all I could do to get you out at all."

Thomas holds out his hands and does not object.

The London dock is busy early in the morning, cargo in the process of loading up on decks or coming off the boats. Men run around fixing rigging, haggling payment, wrangling passengers; no one cares about a man in chains. They stop at a tall boat with three masts, simple brown paint and no flag of the crown as yet. Peter follows some member of the ship up the gang plank and Thomas follows behind him. Crates and barrels swing up onto the ship by ropes, some smaller ones carried by deckhands. Clearly people are not the only cargo to be ferried in this passage.

"This way."

Thomas glances over at one man gesturing to Peter. Peter looks back at Thomas, as if to say something but another man already puts his hand on Thomas' shoulder.

"Come along, you; you're below until we set sail."

Thomas says nothing as the man turns him around and leads him below deck. They take one set of stairs down into the dark of the ship. Thomas sees crates already in place and more being loaded, then they continue toward the bow of the ship.

"Under the captain's quarters," the man explains as if Thomas has asked, "so you keep it quiet and nothing funny, yea hear?"

"I hear," Thomas replies faintly.

They pass through an open gate set into the full width of the ship where it has narrowed so about one square meter makes a cage in conjunction with the bow. Three other men already wait in the space. One man crouches low in the corner while another fiddles with some sort of rolled cloth tied above his head. Only one man watches as Thomas' manacles are removed. Once off, the sailor steps back through the gate and closes it behind him. He takes out a large key and locks the gate. Then he turns back down the darkened bowels of the ship without a word. Thomas stares after him for a moment, the shadows on the wood, the stacks of crates and distant light from the stairs and the open hold.

"What's your name?"

Thomas turns his head to the man who had watched his arrival. The man has a head of red hair, short so it barely brushes his ears, and freckles even visible in this lacking light. Thomas breathes out slowly.

The man frowns and asks again, "what's your name?"

"Thomas," Thomas whispers.

The man purses his lips. "The one in the corner is Tad, this mess is Matthew and I am Mark."

"I am not a mess. I simply want to figure out these things," the one referred to as Matthew says.

Mark rolls his eyes. "It's a hammock; You never spent one day at sea?"

"When I traveled we had beds in state rooms."

"I'm sure you did."

Tad near the ground makes a scoffing noise.

Mark looks at Thomas again. "Well, welcome to the brig." He makes a mock smile. "Hope you enjoy the trip."

Thomas only stares. It is the most conversation he has been involved in, excluding Peter, in years.

"Enjoy?" Matthew says with an exasperated sigh, pulling his hands away finally from what Thomas realizes are rolled up hammocks. "How could we possibly, sleeping in these?"

"You heard of sarcasm, mate?"

"I have heard of proper accommodations!"

"Not for us," Tad mutters, tapping his fingers over the knuckles of his other hand. "Not right. Not us."

"Not for prisoners," Mark adds in a dark tone. His eyes tick to Thomas again. He looks Thomas up and down once. "You were in Bedlam?"

Thomas blinks. "How did you know?"

He points at Thomas wrists, the scars visible from past the edge of his too short sleeves. Thomas rubs them unconsciously. "They chain you up in Bedlam if you're trouble or raving I hear."

Thomas nods then tilts his head. "I imagine they chain one in Newgate as well."

Mark smirks. "Aye, but they work you too, builds muscle." He gestures to Thomas' obviously thin form. "In Bedlam they starve you."

"And you know this?"

Mark looks away. "I've ferried prisoners before."

Thomas chooses not to state the obvious, that this Mark is now the prisoner.

Not an hour later, the voices above decks start to change in tone. The shouts sound more organized, urgent, a clear repetition of orders from man to man. Then Thomas feels the ship begin to move.

"Cast off," Mark mutters.

The ship is leaving London to take Thomas to Savannah and his new prison. A small tension inside him eases. Perhaps Thomas feared, despite every moment since, that he might still be cast back into his cell at Bedlam. He circles his fingers around the scars on his wrists as if the chains were still there.

The four men remain in the brig, locked safely away as the ship makes its way out to sea. A sailor brings them some dinner in a tin bowl each, some type of meat in a broth. The taste may not be as good as he had with Peter's finery or his days as a lord but it excels on Thomas' Bedlam diet by far. Thomas eats every bite.

"Just think," Mark says glibly, "we might be boarded by pirates."

"Pirates!" Matthew hisses in alarm.

Mark grins at him. "Might be right lucky and die under a pirate sword instead of working away in a field."

Thomas thinks it always returns to pirates.

When the light from above grows faint and night clearly falls, Mark shows the other three men how to unfurl and climb into their hammocks. Thomas suspects Mark to be a former sailor while the others gentlemen of some kind. He does not wonder why they are here. He does not ask. He does not care. When Thomas rolls into his swaying bed for the night, he thinks of Miranda and James.

His wife, Miranda Hamilton, formerly Miranda Barlow. She laughed when she felt it, smiled with genuine truth and spoke as proud as any man. She understood him, she protected him. She told him once he always spoke in poetry. He told her she was. He remembers dancing on their wedding day, her hair a tower of curls and gems twinkling in the candle light like a star fallen from heaven.

But Miranda is dead.

His James, his truest love, his Lieutenant James McGraw. A man that challenged him, did not just agree and bow and offer deference to his rank but a man that disagreed, that told Thomas he was wrong, a man that did not treat him as a silly boy. James trembled in Thomas' arms, kissed with hesitation, with fear but learned with love, pulled him closer, kissed longer. Thomas felt James born new beside him, his smiles more ready and his words happy. James told Thomas he could listen to Thomas read for hours. Thomas spoke to watch James' face when he listened. Thomas remembers James' eyes looking at Thomas like the world could be beautiful and Thomas thought James a gift of proof that the world was.

But James is dead.

His James, his beautiful, passionate... his James... his James is not waiting to be found, to be held, to be loved. His James is dead.

Thomas lies in his hammock, on a ship, on the sea, sailing away from memory and pain toward nothing because those he loves are gone. Tears leak silently from his eyes, his hands shaking over his chest and Thomas cannot sleep. He only hears the sound of swords, the drip of blood, and the word 'dead, dead, dead.'

* * *

As far as Thomas learns, the desire of the boat's captain had been to leave the four prisoners below decks in their bow cell for the duration of the journey.

"What more do criminals deserve?"

However, Peter and some others spoke in favor of the four as they were not 'hardened' criminals guilty of such base crimes as murder or rape or treason. Peter argued that they were all originally gentlemen in some form and thus deserve some leniency; that is why they are being ferried to such a magnanimous form of incarceration on a plantation in the new world.

"Just another form of work camp," Mark grumbles as the second Lieutenant explains the reason and limits behind their release from behind bars. "Because where we're going is outside in a field it's better?"

"Better than mine," Thomas replies.

"Just be glad you're getting to move about the ship," The Lieutenant says crossly.

"And where should we run?" Matthew complains as they move toward the top deck. "We surly cannot swim anywhere."

Up on the deck, Thomas sees the sea. The water appears far bluer than Thomas should have imagined. The docks of London always bustle and crowd with boats of all sizes. When one views the ocean from the shore of London they see ships, barely water. You may view the ocean beyond but masts block your sightline so wood is inexorably tangled with that water. He never properly looked at the ocean, saw the shine of the sun on its surface or the wide expanse of nothing but blue and more blue. He sees the point where the water meets the sky and wonders what shade each blue should be? Is the ocean an opal and the sky a powder blue? Then again the ocean seems to change, first a morning blue then greener to aqua. Is it the sun that makes it so? Thomas thinks perhaps this beauty of the sea a mask for the danger upon and underneath it.

"Thomas?" Peter walks up beside Thomas, a hesitant smile on his face. "Are you well?"

Thomas only smiles back and says, "Good morning."

"You look far better than when we boarded."

Thomas shakes his head. "I doubt that."

Peter clears his throat and does not try to argue with Thomas. It is then Thomas notices that Peter carries something. He holds it up and Thomas realizes, as if he had not already known, it is a book.

"I had not thought to bring many with me on my visit to London. I read less than in the past what with my work in Charleston." He clears his throat and holds out the book to Thomas. "But it is a long crossing and I felt perhaps you should wish something to read yourself."

Thomas stares at him. He has not seen a proper book outside of the shelves of Dr. Blake's office since before Bedlam. Thomas reaches out and takes the book from Peter. He drops the book almost immediately, his hands shaking, the feeling of the cover oddly unfamiliar, like a shot of memory not his own.

"Oh, here." Peter stoops to pick up the book.

"My apologies," Thomas gasps out quickly, his voice raw.

Peter stands up straight and holds out the book to him again. "Think nothing of it."

Thomas takes the book, holding it tighter this time, the leather smooth to his touch and the weight of the pages significant. He turns the book to the side to read the spine. His gut clenches at the name.

"Marcus Aurelius," Peter says. "I know you cared for his writing and it was but chance that I had a volume in my trunk."

" _Meditations_ ," Thomas says aloud.

He opens the front cover to the first page. The page is blank, no inscription, no names, no writing to recognize as his own. It is not that book.

Thomas closes the book again and forces out a smile. "Thank you, Peter."

Thomas rolls the book up in his hammock, safe and hidden. However, he cannot read it. He keeps the book near him when he sleeps, traces the square shape, runs his finger tips over the cover and the paper of the pages. Yet he reads not one word. Every word would remind him of James and sound like death instead of the love it used to speak.

* * *

"I was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy," Mark tells Thomas a week into their voyage. "I was near to captain; could have had my own ship in a year."

"But?" Thomas asks politely.

Mark frowns as he helps a boy not more than ten tie off a rope. "I was court–martialed."

The boy's eyes widen and he scurries away as if Mark's disgrace should bleed onto him.

Thomas stays by the railing as Mark finishes tying off the rope the boy forgot. "One is not usually court–martialed for a lack of reason," he says.

Mark scowls at Thomas then looks away. His hand moves but the rope is set and his aid no longer needed. Mark shakes his head. "I disagreed with my captain."

"Disagreed?"

Mark nods sharply. "Disagreed enough." And Mark does not tell him more.

Thomas wonders if James and Mark could have ever served together, climbed the same rigging, ate the same food, disliked the same captain. Thomas does not ask.

"Better than Tad," Mark says as he saunters over to Thomas and leans his back against the rail. "Not right in the head that boy. Slow of some kind. He was in a private institution, or so Matthew said. Not like your Bedlam but, well, families with money want that stink far away I should imagine."

"Yes," Thomas says quietly, his thumb rubbing a line from his palm over scar tissue and back again, "forgotten."

"Matthew..." Mark sucks on his teeth for a moment then shrugs. "Don't know about him. Fucked the wrong MP's daughter?" Mark laughs suddenly. "Or son?" He laughs again. "Can't tell, but he's certainly some duke or earl with all that priss." Thomas glances over at him and Mark deflates somewhat. "Not that the rich can't be all right."

"Rarely," Thomas says, "in my experience."

"So?" Mark asks. "What is your crime then, Thomas?"

 _I chose mercy and progress over ambition, stood in the way of my father and lay with a man._

 _I tried to change society and I loved the wrong man._

 _I loved a man._

 _I loved and I led the ones I loved to a violent death without me._

 _I loved a Lieutenant of the Royal Navy; I loved his voice, his determination, his honesty, his cautious smiles, the cut of his uniform, his eyes on me, his defense of me, his kisses, his hands, his body, his innocence and his worldliness. I loved a beautiful man who I led to his grave._

Thomas turns away from Mark and does not answer.

Mark tries to ask Thomas again about his past, finds Thomas on deck for casual conversation but Thomas' replies grow shorter, less frequent and Mark stops trying. Thomas sees James in Mark, a fallen seaman, and he only makes Thomas' melancholy grow.

Instead, Thomas listens to the sailors as they work. He watches the smallest sailors, still children, jump from rope to rope as if they never feared a fall. Thomas learns the names of sails and ropes and masts, recites them to himself to stay sane.

"Main top sail, main top gallant, foremast, foreyard... mainstay, forestay... "

He imagines James on this boat, barking orders, navigating the sea. He tries to think of how James would look as the helmsman at the wheel or standing beside the captain. He even thinks of James in only his shirt and breeches, climbing up the netting toward the top of the sails, catching ropes and swinging about Thomas' head. He imagines James lying in a hammock at night, hair around his face and expression serene. Even Miranda as an elegant passenger questioning the deckhands about sailing. Thomas tries to imagine then both alive because now they are not, only Thomas survives.

* * *

Thomas stays up on deck as much as they will allow. He enjoys the feeling of wind over his skin, of the salt water stinging his eyes and thickening his hair. He breathes in the fresh air of the sea, the taste of fish in every breath. He watches the unfiltered sunlight of the day and the unmasked moonlight of night. He tries to value small things like less bars and locks, sunlight instead of darkness. He tries to praise the absence of medicine or tubs of water or men who treat him as but an object. He tries to relish the lack of physical pain.

Yet Thomas watches the stars and picks out consolations James told him. Which would James have used to chart his course over the water? In the water Thomas sees pearls for Miranda's ear, polished and perfect. The sun burns bright as fire in James' hair, a red like his beard when Thomas last saw him. James would sweat and chaff in his uniform under such unforgiving rays. Thomas imagines himself stripping James of each layer of clothing, kissing and touching hot skin until James breathes heavy beneath him and the sun pales by comparison to their own passion.

"But not anymore," Thomas whispers to himself.

Thomas remains on deck and watches the sea; the water looks black as the sky at night and crystal blue in the day. When they fled what did Miranda think of the sea? Did she fall in love or hide below? Did James praise the sea for their escape or curse it for taking him far from Thomas?

Watching the water, Thomas thinks about how deep the sea is, a bottom somewhere below no one living has seen. He thinks of wrecked ships sinking for kilometers toward the lonely bottom. He thinks of the skeletons of sailors crusted with sea life and sharks sliding between rotting wood. He thinks about James on the bottom of the ocean, covered in sand, his hair turned to kelp and his eyes gone. He thinks of a frozen expression of horror on James' face while all his beauty eats away with the unforgiving sea.

* * *

One night, Thomas stands on deck under a near moonless sky. He knows the hour must be late but sleep is not something he easily finds. When he sleeps he dreams of blood on James' face, Miranda screaming.

In the water below now, Thomas sees ripples from the movement of the ship cascading out, sometimes a glint of a particularly bright star on a crest. He wonders how fast the ship moves? What if they should lose their wind and stop? How calm would the sea look then?

Suddenly a call comes from the crow's nest. "Ship sighted!"

The few hands on deck this late jerk to life, several moving toward Thomas' side of the ship. He peers with them into the darkness, trying to discern what the boy up in the rigging sees.

"There," one man says pointing to the outline of a ship near the horizon.

Thomas sees the ship now, a black shape covering where there should be stars. The quartermaster slides up next to him with a glass in hand. He puts the glass to his eye, searching the horizon.

"Ship of the line?" The lieutenant on watch asks.

"No. It's the 'Walrus,'" The quartermaster lowers the glass from his face. "Captain James Flint."

"Captain Flint," Thomas whispers.

"Aye," the quartermaster says though Thomas did not intend for him to hear. "The likes of a pirate you'd never want to meet. If you did, likes to be your last meeting."

"You cannot tell the specific ship at this distance," The lieutenant replies with an incredulous noise.

A deckhand laughs once. "Reckon he does. Knows every ship on the water."

The quartermaster roughly hands the glass back to the lieutenant. "You had best hope he cannot see us in this light or we'll never reach Charleston." The quartermaster swerves around the open mouthed lieutenant and stalks back toward the wheel.

"I... uh, extinguish lights! Lanterns out!" The lieutenant orders in a hush.

The already dim lanterns on the deck go out one after another, every sailor turned silent should their voice somehow carry far enough across the water.

Thomas watches the shape of the ship on the horizon, barely discernible as a ship, like a shadow matching the sky. The shape appears not to move for a while, too far away. Thomas imagines he sees the masts, a flag at the top of one. Would the flag bear a skeleton or a sword? Would the flag drip blood of the victims it has passed over? It already bears the blood of his parents.

Thomas wants to ask Flint if he ever met a woman, smart as ten Cambridge or Eaton or Oxford men. Did he ever slice her quickly with his sword, drop her at his feet. He wants to ask Flint if he ever killed a man with thick auburn hair, a sharp jaw line and eyes deep like the sea? Did he ever meet another man named James and spill his blood upon the deck? He wants to ask pirate Captain Flint would he be so gracious as to take Thomas too?

* * *

Thomas watches the sea every day. He holds the book Peter gave him in his hands, thinks about throwing it down into the waters. Would it sink and find it's recipient somewhere under the waves? When it rains he watches the swirling clouds and how the ocean seems to answer, creating crests and pools, crashes on the side of the hull.

(His fingers follow the lines of scars on his wrists, tap spots on his arms and trace uneven skin on his chest and back which no one else can see but Thomas remembers as a map backward into darkness).

The ocean continues on as he stares at it, only a horizon in the distance with the sky above. Perhaps the sky and the sea are partners, commanding and aiding each other, meeting at points of joy and points of conflict. If that should be true, then Thomas thinks James would be the sea and Thomas the sky. Thomas spent so long above the reality of the world, the danger, the death. James lived right inside it, a sailor on the sea risking his life with every voyage. With the fate befallen them both should Thomas not simply fall into the sea? His sky is gray now and the ocean depths blacker still. If he should fall into the sea would he sink until he laid beside James? Could they rot together?

"But James would wish me to live," Thomas tells himself.

Would he be betraying James and Miranda to follow them down?

* * *

Thomas attempts to bolster his own mood. He is free of Bedlam. He will no longer be forced into cold bathes or bleed without illness or to drink purgatives. He will not be chained to a wall by his neck. He is alive. He survived. He may be sailing to a different sort of cage, an unknown plantation in the wild colonies, but he is not dead yet. Thomas still lives.

"I should wish to see you once you are delivered to Savannah," Peter says to him as he eats an orange, throwing the peel into the ocean. "However, Oglethorpe would not agree. He is of the mind that once a man enters his plantation he does not leave."

"No afternoon guests?"

Peter frowns. "He sounds to be a good man. He has banned slavery in the colony thus far and wants to create some kind of equitable agrarian society."

Thomas looks up at the sky and remember his friends in his parlor walking out after his discussion of pardons for pirates and his request for help. "Perhaps someone should inform him that idealism often results in ruin."

"Your failure does not make all dreams defunct, Thomas," Peter says.

Thomas turns to him in surprise as it is the first negative thing he has said to Thomas since Bedlam. Thomas finds it oddly comforting. "You think it worthwhile?"

Peter takes a bite of an orange slice and shakes his head. "It is not my plan."

"Miranda would approve it," Thomas says quietly. "I should imagine she would call for women to own land and hold office in whatever small government they should form in this utopian farming community."

Peter looks at Thomas again. "Miranda often left her sphere."

"Is that what you call it?"

"Society called it that. I am not a mover of foundations, not anymore."

"Except in this new world. Have you not helped create them?"

Peter chuckles. "I am not quite you, Thomas. Perhaps I have your father's ambition but not your vision."

Thomas finches at the mention of his father. "And James' rationality?"

Peter clenches one hand, looks away from Thomas and does not answer.

Thomas wonders at all his thoughts returning to those two, Miranda and James in an endless loop. Miranda was his wife, James his lover. He loved them both, they fit into his politics, his ideas, his hopes and dreams, his whole world. How does one rebuild a life when the foundation has crumbled away? What should Miranda say of him now? Would she tell him that his ideals can carry him forward? Would James tell him that life is hard and one must become hard with it? Thomas does not want his ideas, he does not want experience of armor. He wants Miranda and James – Miranda's voice, James' eyes, Miranda's knowledge, James' heart, James arms, his kiss, his soul – Thomas wants them alive.

Thomas thinks, perhaps, his prison now is not of walls or fields but of two dead people who will never leave his mind.

* * *

Five weeks into their crossing, Thomas emerges from his self imposed prison of James and Miranda to recognize Peter. He sees Peter – his half answers and his glances always turning away – and Thomas knows the answer.

Thomas stands in the doorway to Peter's state room. Peter folds a pair of shirts to pack them away in a trunk at the foot of his bed.

"The captain says we should arrive soon. We had a diversion to avoid a storm a week back but other than that we have made good time."

"Good time to a new prison."

Peter looks up at Thomas as he closes his trunk. He presses his lips together tightly then shakes his head. "I have done what I could Thomas. This is the best alternative for you in place of Bedlam and you could not stay there."

"Not unless I had died."

Peter frowns more, stepping close to Thomas in the doorway. "But you did not die and you will be far better treated in this place. I promise you that." Peter scoots around Thomas onto the deck, the sun making his face appear more ragged either from age or time at sea. He smiles and attempts a jovial tone. "Come, Thomas, have you not spent enough time in darkness?"

Peter grips Thomas arms and pulls him just a little out onto the deck, sidestepping a man scrubbing with a bucket of water until they stand at the edge of the boat. Thomas looks out at the ocean, sun spots on the water.

"I know it was you, Peter."

Peter abruptly tenses beside Thomas, his nails digging into the wood of the rail. "Thomas –"

"I know you were the one who told my father about us."

Thomas feels Peter staring at the side of his head. He does not need to see Peter's expression – horror, surprise, denial – Thomas does not care about Peter's reaction.

"No one knew the three of us better. No one else spent as much time with us." Finally, he turns his head and looks at Peter. "And no one else came to try and rescue me."

"When I heard how they were treating –"

"You did not come out of pity; you came out of guilt."

Peter shuts his mouth with an audible click. His eyes appear wild, as if backed into a corner with only fight or flight in mind. Thomas turns fully to face Peter's profile and lets his words hang, does not give Peter a life line. He lets the weight of his own misery at Peter's hands grow between them invisible but completely present.

Then he asks one word, "Why?"

Peter stares at Thomas, his mouth still shut. He swallows once but does not speak.

"I can guess, Peter, and perhaps I would be right, perhaps wrong. I imagine greed or fear conquer all men with enough time. I think your why does not matter because what you did, what you chose to do, is now done and irreversible."

"I came to save you..." Peter says weakly.

"You did not save me, Peter, you merely unlocked a cage." Thomas shakes his head once. "I am not saved by you."

Peter breathes in sharply, fists his hands on the railing as he stares at Thomas. "You are here, you are out of Bedlam, you..."

"You cannot claim to save someone who you placed in hell to begin with."

Peter makes a stiff pained noise like a strangled gasp and looks away toward the sea. Thomas sees a shake in his shoulders.

"I could forgive you my fate," Thomas says quietly making Peter's head whip around toward him again. "With time perhaps I could forgive the pain, the indignity, the years I lost because of you."

"You... you could..."

"Perhaps," Thomas says curtly to make it plain this is not forgiveness as Peter should wish. He takes one step closer to Peter, just short of touching. "But I could never forgive you Miranda. I could never forgive you James." Thomas' voice remains flat, icy, calm to the point of the madness he nearly found in Bethlem Royal Hospital. "Them, I could never forgive you, Peter. James? My James?" Thomas grips the railing tightly just beside Peter's shaking hands. "I shall never forgive you him."

Peter pulls his hands away from the railing as if Thomas struck him. He takes a large stumbling step back away from Thomas. He stares for a long moment at Thomas' face then turns and rushes away around Thomas back into his state room.

Thomas breathes out slowly looking at nothing – the wood of the boat swaying with the movement of the sea, boys climbing the ropes, sun flashing now and then between the sails. He turns back to the railing – to the ocean where his love lived and died – and stands still. He feels somehow more alone in this open expanse then he ever did in his dark, locked cell. At least in his cell he had Miranda and James. In his cell, Miranda spoke in his memory and James lay in his arms. James waited beyond the walls with his smile and his kisses. Now they are gone – stabbed and slashed and drowned and dead – and Thomas is truly alone in a hateful world. He wonders, with a guilt he should not have, if there was some way he could have saved them?

When Thomas wakes up the next morning, they are anchored off the coast of the new world and Savannah awaits.


	4. The Plantation

Thomas Hamilton watches the ocean as he rides on the long boat from the ship, Peter left on board, toward the shore. He sees the crests of the waves change into froths of white as they near the sand. He watches the buildings of the small settlement of Savannah quickly change into dense forest as their locking carriage bumps along a dirt path that is barely a road. The forest blocks much of the sun and looks wild as the new world claims to be. He watches the sun as they step out of the carriage before the gates of the plantation appearing out of the trees. The sun shines and Thomas feels now the heavy heat so unlike London.

"My hell was cold so can this be a heaven instead?"

"Come along!" A man shouts near the gate, Thomas' three fellow prisoners ahead of him.

Thomas looks down at them now, the gate opening in the middle of the engraved words 'Non sibi sed aliis' on the face.

"'Not for ourselves, but for others,'" Thomas reads as they walk through.

Behind them, the door clangs shut. Thomas looks over his shoulder and sees heavy locks bolted into place. Two men holding rifles flank the doors. This may be the new world, a place of air and sun, but it is still a prison he cannot leave.

"Gentlemen." Thomas turns back as their prisoner party stops. A man wearing a grey wig which would use some attention stands in their path with two younger men beside him. "Welcome to Oglethorpe plantation, I am he."

"Oglethorpe," Thomas whispers to himself.

"It is my policy that those who enter this plantation are not to leave it again. So while you will find some relief here from the punishments you may have suffered in the old world, do not think this your manor house or autonomy to do as you like. You are still criminals of your own kind."

Mark makes a derisive noise.

"Mercy does not mean freedom," Thomas says to himself.

"Here you shall work. You shall be useful to others and perhaps find some peace for yourself. Our society in this new world should be one of a more equal footing than the old."

"That why you need the walls?" Mark asks under his breath.

Oglethorpe glances at Mark for a moment then returns to his presentor guise. "You shall all be given beds and clothes in the barracks then assignments for your work. Do as you are told and you shall be treated well. Adieu."

The two men who stand with Oglethorpe stay where they stand as he walks away.

"Right," the taller one says, still a few inches shorter than Thomas, "this way." He gestures to the left and they follow him, the other man taking the rear of the party.

Both men carry rifles but they wear them slung over their back as though their presence is merely a formality. They walk past rows of swaying stalks as high as Thomas' shoulder. They pass one field still waiting to be sown with parallel rows dug into the dirt. Thomas sees another field beyond the tilled earth and wonders how many acres this plantation consists of. Savannah is still new and how much land could they have cleared already?

Then Thomas sees three long buildings in a row, end to end at the edge of the fields where the forest begins again. The man in front walks toward the first building. He stops near the door and points at Matthew and Tad, "You two will be here." Then he gestures with his head for Thomas and Mark to walk on.

"Follow me," the man behind them says as he walks around to lead.

Thomas and Mark glance at each other but say nothing. Thomas' descent into secluded melancholy during their weeks on the ship did little to endear him to Mark but Thomas did not wrong him either. They walk to the third building at the end of the barracks line. Their guard pulls out a large metal key and unlocks the door. Thomas feels a twitch in his arms. Then the man opens the door. Thomas sees rows of beds, trunks at the foot of each one and small cabinets between each pair of beds, which must double as a place for storing personal items and as a side table.

"Right," the man says. "A bed there and a bed there. You, Thomas, the far one and Mark, the one there in the middle. Should have clothes in the chest." He looks at Thomas, his eyes ticking up and down once. "Probably will fit."

"Might be difficult to change if that's what you want," Mark says.

The man looks back at Mark with a frown. Mark holds up his hands, manacles still binding them.

The man makes a 'tsk' noise. "Right." He pulls a straight key out of his pocket, steps up to Mark and unlocks the manacles so they drop to the floor. He sides steps and does the same for Thomas, catching Thomas' before they fall. "There."

"Appreciated," Mark says.

"Thank you," Thomas echoes.

"Right, so get changed and then we are going back to the field where Mr. Oglethorpe spoke to you. We grow two crops here. You both are on sugar cane."

"What's the other?" Mark asks.

"Cotton."

Thomas nods. The cash crop of the new world. "And our compatriots?" Thomas asks. "They are cotton?"

The man laughs once. "Not as hard to teach a slow one to pick the cotton and the other is a…" The man purses his lips and does not finish his thought. "Sugar cane takes a bit more muscle, is all."

Mark gives Thomas a skeptical sidelong look that Thomas rather agrees with. However, he suspects his height to be the culprit in this case. To some, tall means strong.

"Either of you farmed before?" the man asks as the two of them move toward the beds the man indicated for them.

Mark scoffs as he reaches his far closer bed. "I was a navy man."

"Navy…" the man mutters.

"Better me on a boat than your field, son."

"Well, you've got a field," the man snaps. "And you call me son again you'll have less."

"Yes, sir."

Thomas reaches the bed on the end of the row. It looks likely to be a good four inches shorter than he would need. He crouches and opens the trunk at its foot. Inside are two pairs of gray breeches, three gray shirts, some stockings and a pair of shoes. The shoes certainly appear too small. He somehow doubts they will force him into bare feet here.

He thinks of the stone floors of Bedlam – holes in his shoes, in his stockings, dirt between his toes, the crack in the floor in front of the bath room, the tile that pinched vulnerable skin if you forgot to miss it between the second and third tubs, the unevenly shaped and far too familiar flat stones of his cell rubbed smooth in certain places from prisoner after prisoner, from his own feet and body moving over the same spots.

"What about you?"

Thomas drops the lip of the trunk with a loud bang in the near empty space. He turns his head back sharply to the man who led them here standing in the middle of the long room now. Closer to the front door, Mark pulls a new shirt over his head and gives Thomas a quizzical look.

"No," Thomas finally answers. "I have never farmed."

When the two of them change into their new plantation wear, minus Thomas' shoes, they make their way with their half guard, half escort, through the lines of fields. The clothes feel similar to Bedlam, plain linen except that every piece is fresh and new. Thomas tries not to see vomit or blood stains from clothing gone when he looks down at himself.

"Christopher!"

Thomas stops suddenly as their guard halts his brisk pace at the edge of an open, dirt field where at least a dozen men work. A man with short, mousey brown hair turns at the yell then jogs over to where they stand. Christopher is tan as their guard, a head shorter than Thomas with slight muscles standing out on his forearms where Thomas can see and a ready smile on his oval face.

"New?" Christopher asks, his eyes coasting over the two of them quickly.

"Fresh off the boat." The guard points at each of them in turn. "Mark, Thomas, and not an experienced hand between them."

"Oi," Mark says indignantly.

He makes a nonplussed noise and says as though it were a curse, "navy."

Christopher raises his eyebrows and looks at Mark. "Navy?"

"And what has anyone against the navy here, eh?"

"Likely you do, since you're not with them anymore," Christopher comments then turns to Thomas without waiting for Mark to retort again. He looks Thomas up and down once then his lips twist. "Gentry or a lord?"

Thomas only looks levelly back at him. "I am less now."

Christopher scoffs. "Aren't we all, but it means you'll take more work than him to get into condition."

Thomas thinks perhaps he should be insulted, and maybe another man would be, but Thomas knows in the real world of working men his skills are minimal and his time in Bedlam will not have helped.

"All right," Christopher continues now to the guard. "I can take them from here if you like, Will, you can tell the master I will sort them out."

"You know he doesn't like when you call him master; you're not slaves. There's no slavery here."

Christopher nods. "Right, right, and I can leave then, can I?"

Will's lip curls into an ugly expression but he simply turns on his heel and marches away. Thomas and Mark watch him then both turn back to Christopher with likely matching expressions of surprise. Christopher looks solemn for a moment then his eyes tick to the two of them and he smiles.

Mark barks a laugh. "Well now, can't say they must like you much here if you go on like that!"

Christopher shrugs. "He would never have liked me much anyway so why work toward otherwise? Plus, he's an ass." He gestures toward the two of them to follow. "Come on, lucky for you we are planting right now which is the easier part of sugar cane farming."

"What is the harder part?" Thomas asks.

Christopher looks at him. "Well, when you have to chop stalks taller than you with a machete but make sure you chop in the right place so not to lose that molasses and burn the field in preparation but not so much as to burn the forest too of course and keep the plants well so they can grow again the next year." Christopher purses his lips again. "And this is only our second season here, been barely a year."

"Have you been here a year?" Thomas asks.

Christopher does not answer for a moment, giving Thomas a searching look. "Nearly." Then he turns away back to the plowed lines where other men work. "Now, today we plant seeds and you learn how many places in your back can hurt."

Thomas finds Christopher's joking comment to be completely justified by the day's end.

Mark and Thomas join Christopher and about half a dozen other men in walking, half bent over, through the plowed lines down the field. Each row lies a yard part from the row next to it, a man to each row. They have a bag of seeds and must dig a small hole with a trowel for each seed. Place the seed inside the hole, cover it with dirt and then move on once more. Christopher said to give a yard or so between each seed. Thomas moves slowly in a constant hunch as he digs, seeds, covers, then repeats. He shoes soon turn browner with the dirt and a line seems to creep up his stockings. Thomas finds himself counting in his head as he drops seeds.

Twenty… twenty-one… twenty-two…

It numbs his mind quickly. He does not find himself day dreaming yet, not with the sweat on his neck and dirt framing his fingernails. He focuses on the simple actions in front of him, the feeling in his back and the blur in front of his eyes.

When Thomas reaches the end of his row, Christopher says, "And now the next field."

Thomas counts steps between each hole and drop of a seed, the bag over his arm feeling heavier instead of lighter as he moves. His joints ache more with each step.

"One, two, three, plant…"

He wonders at so small a thing as the seed on his palm creating a towering plant with a liquid so valuable inside. He wonders at the history of sugar. Who first thought to cut into this specific plant in search of something to eat, something to taste, something to sweeten their life. In Thomas' past schoolings and the extensive reading on his own, a history of the sugar cane plant was not among the pages read.

"One, two, three…."

He feels the dirt under his fingers, something real, something he can move and change. The walls of Bedlam were solid, unyielding. If you chose to smash your hand or your head upon them, it would be you that changed and bled, never the wall. The dirt slips over his palms leaving tiny traces in creases he never noticed in his skin. It falls back to the ground not quite the same as when Thomas first shoveled it up then packed it back down.

"One, two, three…"

He hears the other men moving along in the same rhythmic pattern as him. Their shoes scuff through the dirt at a shuffle. Occasionally a man will groan or bones with click as someone pauses to stretch pained limbs. It reminds him of the crack of bone on stone.

"One, two…"

It reminds him of the man who tapped his head against the stone wall in Bedlam day after day. Thomas tried to stop him once and failed. He watched him several times, dozens maybe, when he was still permitted to leave his cell. He watched the tap that was more like a 'thunk,' skin and bone meeting stone. The spot on the wall turned into a muddy red, dirt and blood combined on the textured stone. One day Thomas saw the man lying on the floor beside the wall, the spot on the wall evident as ever and a matching color tone on his forehead. He breathed in sharp gasps spaced apart too long. Another patient said something about a wheeze and crack. The orderlies left the man there for three hours before finally taking him to a room somewhere. Thomas never saw him again but the spot on the wall remained red then brown for months.

"Thomas?"

Thomas drops his trowel and pulls his eyes up slowly from the reddish mud at his feet. Christopher stands beside him, one hand touching Thomas' shoulder and the other holding a cup. Thomas shifts just enough so Christopher's hand no longer touches him.

"Yes?"

"Your hand."

Thomas looks down and sees a thin line of blood on his hand. He looks down and sees the match on the edge of his trowel. Christopher shifts around Thomas and pours a small bit of water from the cup over Thomas' hand. The blood mingles with the dirt for a moment in his palm making a new color like James' hair before spilling over the edges of his hand onto the ground. Then Christopher holds out the cup.

"Do not forget to drink," he says, "or the sun will put you down."

"It has not been long," Thomas says though he takes the cup regardless.

"It has been hours," Christopher says, "past midday."

Thomas only stares at him.

Christopher reaches into a pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. He then presses it against Thomas' hand. Thomas pulls back his hand from Christopher's fingers, the handkerchief nearly falling to the dirt but Christopher catches it in time. Thomas sees a faint line in red on the white cloth.

"You should eat your midday meal before starting again," Christopher says after a pause between them. "They allow us fifteen minutes. Follow the rows back to where we started. Will shall have a tin for you."

Thomas looks up and sees more rows and tilled fields than he remembers counting or planting, the time having slipped through him measured incorrectly.

"How many fields are there?" Thomas asks finally turning his head to look at Christopher.

Christopher's tongue clicks as he glances around at the men working. "It began with only two hundred acres last year, now we have three hundred more to plant."

"In addition?"

Christopher looks back him. "Sugar cane is a hardy plant. It can be harvested several times if you maintain the plants right and we have only put those plants through one season. So they should be good to harvest again. Two hundred acres already planted and three more to add to that." He shrugs a little. "Who knows how Oglethorpe may wish to expand after that if Tomochichi will let him."

Thomas gives Christopher an uncomprehending look at the name. Christopher nods. "Local Indian chief. Oglethorpe likes working with him instead of just shooting at them like they do up north." Christopher shakes his head. "Never seen him."

The silence stretches for a moment then Christopher folds up his handkerchief and places it on Thomas' cut hand without touching Thomas. Then he taps the rim of the cup in Thomas' other hand. "Drink then go eat."

Thomas looks down into the water of the cup. He takes a sip. The water is not cold but nor is it warmed by too much sun. He turns his head to Christopher walking back over to his own row of planting. "Thank you."

Christopher waves a hand over his shoulder.

They plant another five hours, stopping only when the sun dips low enough and they lose their light to see. Thomas feels weak from too many hours on his feet and the heat of the sun; he has never worked so many hours in his life. Just as Christopher said, his back pains him no matter how he stands or moves. His lower back especially stabs from the stooped posture of the day.

The men all converge together to eat supper in a large hall closer to the wall around the plantation and within sight of the manner house. The room houses about half a dozen long tables with around ten men to a table. The overseers do not eat with them, taking turns guarding the doors before leaving to eat their own meals elsewhere.

"They used not to bother with watching over dinner," a man at Thomas' table by the name of Bartholomew says. "But when our conversation grew too noisy, they changed up to this guarded eating."

"Because you started singing sea shanties," another man quips.

Mark snorts into his mug of beer.

"What sorts of songs?" Tad asks, his fingers crumbling up his piece of bread onto his plate.

"No!" a few men snap loudly making one of the overseers near a door perk up.

"He'll sing again and we are close enough to them leaving us alone for an hour that I would give up your singing, yeah?" A blond man says, pointing with his fork.

Bartholomew frowns and gives the blond a lofty look. "Just because you cannot sing, Stephen."

"Sing in the field then," Mark says quietly, "the slaves do that, I hear."

Their table falls quiet, the clink of cutlery and a muffled laugh from a far table.

"We are not slaves," Stephen finally says, his voice strained.

"Aren't we?" Mark asks.

Beside Mark, across the table from Thomas, Matthew stares down at his plate, his breathing a little off. Thomas wonders if he tries not to cry. On Mark's other side, Christopher watches Mark for a long moment then his eyes turn to Thomas. Thomas looks down at his plate and thinks about the sea, sunken ships bearing chains underneath the waves.

After the meal, the men are allowed time to themselves in their barracks. Two candles stand on each small cabinet between the beds allowing each man his own light. Thomas' bed proves more shadowy simply due to his being on the end. Bartholomew's bed sits right next to the door in Thomas' row. Thomas does not see Stephen so he must reside in one of the other two barracks. Matthew and Tad left with the smaller group of cotton laborers. So the only other two in his barracks which Thomas recognizes are Mark and Christopher.

Mark reads from a slim volume, dressed now in his night shirt on his cot. Thomas cannot tell from this distance if what he reads is a book or a journal of some kind. In the dimming light, Mark's hair appears redder, too red to be James. His hair is too short, his shoulders less broad, his smile wrong – he no longer reminds Thomas of James as he did on the ship. Perhaps without the sea as a backdrop the comparison fails. Thomas is grateful for it.

When they returned, Thomas found a bag on top of his trunk containing the few possessions left to him – another set of clothing bought for him by Peter when he was released and the book Peter lent him on the ship. Peter either forgot or did not wish to take it back. Thomas cannot decide if he wants any of it. Would it only remind him of betrayal now due to the source or are they merely things?

"Lights out!" Will suddenly shouts from the door, closing it behind him again with a careless bang.

Candles blow out around the room. Thomas hears one man grumble something – 'like children' – while another replies – 'grateful it's not…' – and then only Thomas' candle remains. He looks at the flame, warm like the sun from the field of today. The room itself remains warm, not chilled or damp, and Thomas realizes with a start this surprises him.

"Oi." The man in the cot next to Thomas leans up and blows hard. Thomas' candle snuffs out.

Thomas lies back on his bed, alone again in another prison. He has a bed under his back now, a blanket over his body. The walls around him contain windows where he sees the trees of the forest and a strip of sky. He does not hear moans or cries; he hears a gentle buzz, insects in the night. Thomas' melts back into sleep before he truly realizes his eyes close – an ache in his shoulders, exhaustion in all his limbs and the sense of alone on his mind.

* * *

Thomas' days on the plantation follow very similarly at first. He spends his days with the other men in the fields. They plant sugar cane seeds until all the tilled fields fill with seeds. Thomas' back hurts constantly, his legs feels stiff despite their use and the sun tans his skin slowly but surely so he watches lines form where he rolls up his sleeves at his elbow. He ends every day exhausted and pained with blisters on his feet. It takes him longer, as Christopher suspected, to get into a physical condition to truly handle the work. For weeks, he feels faint many times a day or his hands cramp so much he can barely use them. But he keeps moving, he keeps working and he grows stronger.

When their fields are full, Will divides them further still into groups. Mark disappears with some of the other more burley men to begin clearing more land for planting. Thomas hears the distant sound of chopping and the occasional crash as another tree falls, pushing the forest further back toward the distant walls which surround Oglethorpe's land.

Thomas joins half a dozen men to till acres of land into uniform fields for more planting. Thomas receives a basic hoe with a wooden handle and a metal head.

"You've seen the fields before," Christopher says to Thomas and a new man who arrived a week past. "Straight rows until you hit the other end where it's marked. Make them each about a foot wide. I can show you how to use the hoe if you need."

Thomas stares at the hoe thinking oddly of his father and what he should think of Thomas' now. He thinks of his father telling him how a man such as Thomas deserves far worse and that he once gave it to Thomas. He thinks of the hoe smashing into his father's head until the end becomes a sword, the field the sea, until his father's face turns into James' dripping with blood. Christopher has to pull Thomas up to standing again when he sinks down low in the dirt, the hoe clasped so tightly in his hands that Christopher cannot make him let go.

Thomas hoes line after line, creating gullies to walk through and mounds awaiting seeds. He focuses on straight lines and a steady rhythm. He listens to the sounds of Bartholomew singing softly rows away; the overseers do not stop him.

 _We'll rant and we'll roar, like true British sailors,_

 _We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas…_

Thomas wants to ask him why he sings of the sea when they work a field. Perhaps the man misses the sea now he is confined to earth.

The rows grow longer, the fields appearing out of the cleared land. They plant more seeds, stooping low and Thomas counting in his head. After weeks, a month they begin to tend the newly growing plants.

"When they start to sprout you have to turn the furrow inward," Christopher explains.

Thomas moves dirt around with his hoe, his hands no longer smooth or fine and a beard on his face. He sometimes wonders as he works the dirt with sweat on his brow and his clothes wearing into familiarity, is this eternity here? Is this really the place where he will die one day?

They eat the same round of meals each day, nothing so fine but steady with meat and potatoes and carrots often enough. They eat enough to work well on and Thomas barely notices the taste. He does not, however, cringe away from it either. He hears the other men talk, during their meals. He learns names and snippets of pasts. Brian, a debtor from Cork; John, a counterfeiter and debtor of London; George, a gentry debtor who lost all his land; Patrick, a minor son from a family of some wealth in Ireland who bankrupted his family; even Matthew appears to be in this place because of some misuse of money.

"Oglethorpe prefers a certain type of criminal in his new prison plantation," Christopher says to him, his voice low when Thomas happens to hear of yet another debtor among them. "Have you noticed?"

"A more polite crime perhaps?"

"Less violent to be sure."

"And you?" Thomas asks.

Christopher looks away. "Oh, well." He glances back. "I am not a debtor." He raises his eyebrows. "Are you?"

"No."

At night, Thomas sometimes wakes when the sun has long since set and quiet darkness surprises a man who lived so long in London. He finds his breath fast and must watch the trees, stand from his bed and tip open the window to breathe the fresh, outdoor air before his pulse calms again. He stares up at the sky seeing more stars than he can count above the forest and the open land of the fields. He thinks of a tiny view of sky through metal mesh. He thinks of stars reaching the sea at the horizon. He sometimes stands by the window for an hour or more as he thinks of chains and blood, a bruise on his arm or back, a hand brushing low along his stomach, scars around his wrists he still traces with now rough fingertips. He focuses on his breath, on how fresh the air tastes on his tongue and how very different the woods and sky are here than the buildings and smog of London. When he sleeps again, he does not dream.

* * *

It takes time. It takes months of working, of the pain lessening slowly, of muscle building from daily hoeing and planting and watering and moving wood from felled trees. It takes months. It takes Mark asking him why he stares into his stew for too long not eating because he remembers something worse. It takes the sugar cane growing tall with the leaves that touch each other in their rows. It takes Tad disappearing to work at the mansion. It takes Thomas heaving the contents of his stomach behind the wash house when he sees a line of two tubs inside. It takes five new prisoners joining their plantation. It takes Christopher pulling Thomas' fingers out of fists because Thomas cuts welts into his skin from his fingernails when a new prisoner is named Jonathan. It takes the sugar cane growing taller than Thomas and becoming ready for harvest. It takes time.

Thomas begins to feel like himself once more. He begins to feel like the man he was before Bedlam. He begins to see not something broken and lost, not something just alive. He begins to remember who he was, who he is now.

* * *

Work in the fields starts to feel more a gift than a curse. The sun is healing, the air is freedom enough. Work is heaven because his hands and legs are free from chains. The open space is an Eden because he can see beyond walls and his past lies far away across an ocean. The long days in the fields, the baking sun, the hoe in his hand, the growing calluses feel like relief. Perhaps that is why men call it 'honest work.' He sees the product of his labors before him every day and while he may still feel alone – while he remembers well what he has lost and misses – he is not caged or confined in the same way. He does not dread the opening of a door or the touch of certain hands or strain against chains. He does not often bleed and he is not sick. He thanks the world for small mercies because he has already suffered the largest cruelties.

Thomas begins talking. He had not realized how much he had stopped.

"Why do you sing of the sea?" Thomas asks Bartholomew in the field.

"You don't like my singing?"

Thomas shakes his head. "I ask more about the subject. We are not on a boat, are we?"

Bartholomew only shrugs. "They're the songs I know."

"What?" Brian calls from the row on the other side of Thomas, "you don't like a jolly sailor?"

Thomas stares at him and sees James' smile, his boots in the dirt and his uniform resplendent in the sun. "One cannot speak ill of a sailor," Thomas replies.

Mark laughs at Thomas at dinner in the evenings as he debates with Matthew as to the policies of debtor's prisons and imposing fees for prisoner's own upkeep upon those already imprisoned for a loss or dearth of money. Thomas glances at him, cup in hand. Mark only shakes his head.

"You would rather increase one's debt to keep them where they are? Better more in prison than a method for them to find release?"

"You have a plan laid, our parliamentarian?" George quips, hair in his face and a grin on his lips.

"No," Mark says to Thomas before Thomas can respond to George. "No, I just can't believe you. On the boat here could barely get a word out of you but now…" He laughs once and smiles genuinely. "It's better."

Thomas wonders what he looked like to them on the boat. He wonders what they saw. He takes a drink from his cup then puts it back on the table. Then he nods once at Mark. "It is better."

As he turns toward George again, he catches, for a moment, Christopher watching him with an unreadable expression on his face.

* * *

Six months into Thomas' new residence at the plantation outside Savannah – through the burning of the fields, Christopher showing him how to use the machete, the plants striped of leaves and canes stacked in baskets or on carts – Oglethorpe asks to speak with Thomas.

Thomas walks up to the manor house, Will beside him. The house is certainly not as grand as country mansions Thomas has visited in England. It is, however, grander than any building he has entered in years. Six Greek white columns line the front of the house, two windows with paned glass on either side of the black door. A second floor above has five windows to line up with the floor below, most of the windows wide open to cool the house some in the oppressive heat of the Savannah summer.

"And what is it Mr. Oglethorpe wants with me?" Thomas asks. While time has passed, Thomas' trust in his fellow man is far from wholly restored.

Will makes a non-committal noise and simply opens the front door.

They walk through the entryway, a high ceiling with a wide staircase to the left. Thomas spies a front parlor with dental molding at the ceilings to his right and a dining room with Prussian blue walls to his left. Will, however, does not stop at either of these public rooms but leads Thomas around the back of the staircase to the family portion of the house into what proves to be Oglethorpe's study. Thomas feels a tension he had been unaware of ease somewhat from his shoulders.

A tall desk stands against the back wall of the study between two windows, which look out on the back garden. Thomas spies what appear to be vegetable gardens a few yards from the house. He sees a pair of women bent low with their hands in the dirt. Are there women prisoners here as well or has Oglethorpe a family?

What really draws Thomas' attention, however, are the books. The amount of books is not large by English standards. The amount of books Thomas owned in his time could have filled the parlor and the dining room here. However, Oglethorpe's study contains more books than Thomas has seen together since the day he last saw Miranda crying his name. Two books shelves flank the fireplace on the wall to the left of the windows and a third sits nearest the door where Thomas stands. He sees most of the books near the door appear to be related to agriculture, climate studies, a few accounts on the new world. The far bookcases are at too great a distance for Thomas to read many titles. He recognizes a volume of Chaucer that he once owned; he sees Pythagoras and Plato; a title that looks to be in French.

He hears Miranda's voice, 'L'homme est libre au moment qu'il veut l'être.'

"Thomas Hamilton."

Thomas blinks as James Oglethorpe stands from his desk to face Thomas. Thomas hears the door close behind him and Will is gone.

"You are Thomas Hamilton, are you not?" Oglethorpe asks though he must know.

"I suppose so, though it has been a long time since a thing like surnames had any place in my life."

Oglethorpe looks at him oddly. Thomas does not know the man well enough to tell what the expression might mean. Oglethorpe turns and walks toward the bookshelves on the wall. He slides his finger across the spines on one shelf then pulls out a book. He walks the four steps across the room and holds out the book to Thomas. "Have you read this?"

Thomas looks down at the book, _Paradise Lost_ , John Milton. Thomas looks up again with a twist of his lips. "Is this meant to be a joke?"

Oglethorpe frowns. "How so?"

Thomas chuckles once with some actual mirth then takes the book. He shakes his head, running his fingers over the leather bound cover. Touching a book feels different with his laborer's hands. "I have read it."

"Then what of it?" Oglethorpe asks, rocking back on his heels.

"'What of it?'" Thomas parrots. He tips the book up so the cover is flat toward him, his eyes looking over the pages inside pressed tight together, no dog-ears to be seen. "Are you asking me for a summary?"

Oglethorpe scoffs. "No, of course not; I have read it. It is in my library."

"Many men own libraries they have not read."

Oglethorpe paces a few steps to the side. "I am asking your opinion on the work."

Thomas almost scoffs at the absurdity. Does this man not know what Thomas is now? Has he forgotten Thomas is a prisoner on his plantation? Does he hear himself? Thomas looks at Oglethorpe as he peers back at Thomas, his face in profile now. Thomas thinks more critically about where they reside – an isolated plantation near a settlement, which can barely be called a town, not yet part of an official colony in the Americas, far from any English society or salons or learning.

"You are asking for a conversation about this book," Thomas says. Oglethorpe only watches him. Thomas frowns. "I would ask, why me, why now?"

"Because of all the men here, you are the most learned."

"You know all the men's histories?"

"I know yours." Thomas purses his lips and his fingers stray from the book's cover to the scars on his wrist. Oglethorpe continues. "I have the management of this plantation on my desk most days but I am not without a want of conversation and Savannah society is not a society yet."

"What do you call your plantation here then? A microcosm of a society and yet not enough for your needs?"

"I call it an experiment or a hope."

"Your equitable agrarian society based upon the relocating of prisoners so we might improve upon our moral failings with physical labor?"

"You could put it as such. And the hope that it will grow."

"I think you idealize this place, perhaps. I see a farm as any other. I see men working fields and I see the hierarchy any man would expect to see here. What difference is there in your experiment?"

"This is only the start and it will not be the only plantation." Oglethorpe's voice rises with what Thomas' recognizes as a passion in his own convictions. "Savannah will grow and those who were treated unfairly, imprisoned and given no proper recourse to atone or improve their station may do so here. You think this simply a farm? No, it is a chance. Men may restart their lives, may prove of value rather than wasting in some prison."

"Or asylum."

Oglethorpe looks at Thomas, pausing in his speech. He nods once. "Savannah may become a haven. A different sort of world than the one we left."

"And yet you built a wall around it."

Oglethorpe purses his lips. "It must start somewhere and the men I would wish to bring here would not be released without another wall to hold them in."

"And what should England care once you have them?" Thomas counters. "Do they check the gates for a lock? Or are you simply obtaining a different type of slave without having to pay for him?"

Oglethorpe visibly bristles at that. "I have outlawed slavery in this colony."

"Then what am I?"

"Prisoners and slaves are not the same. Prisoners have a reason to be where they are; they have broken the law in some manner and must pay a price."

"And thus deserve to work your fields?"

Oglethorpe frowns and paces again. "I asked for your presence because I thought you a man of knowledge, one who I could have conversation of literature, of politics, not –"

"Is this not politics?" Thomas quirks his head. "Have you not considered these ideas yourself? As you said, you banned slavery."

"Yes, I…" Oglethorpe stops suddenly watching Thomas. Then he laughs. "Do you truly believe as you say or is this…. Is this the Thomas Hamilton I have heard of, able to argue any point or issue he should wish, so quick witted." He raises his eyebrows. "Some forward thinking ideas about pirates?"

Thomas realizes with some surprise that this conversation was just as Oglethorpe says. It is Thomas arguing the point because he can see the path, because he sees the left and the right of the issue, the side roads and the dips in the journey. He can make the road without intending to and then watch how whomever walks with him takes the path. He moved forward with this debate just now without any intention to do so, without even realizing it. It is a vision of his past he assumed lost.

Thomas feels his hand shake and he suddenly puts the book down on a side board next to the door. He looks at Oglethorpe after a beat. "I am not that man now."

Oglethorpe's lips rise a little into a slight smile. "But you have read the book?"

"I do not know what you should wish to coax from me, sir –"

"I would think I already have."

Thomas frowns, disliking the turn of the tables now but it is his own fault, his own hesitancy. He was fine speaking with his fellow prisoners, the men put to lower station like him but this is the man who imprisons him yet in some ways saved him. Thomas cannot decide how he should feel toward the man.

Thomas says. "I have read the book. Heaven and Hell, the fall of man. If you would want a conversation, I would ask you to think on why you chose this book to hand to me. 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' Is that what you do here perhaps? Are the colonies hell compared with England? Or are we all serving something more in this new world heaven instead?"

Oglethorpe chuckles. "I do not see myself as Satan if that is what you ask. We are on earth, neither heaven nor hell."

Thomas laughs once but the sound is hollow. "I have seen hell, Mr. Oglethorpe, and I have lost a paradise so perhaps your choice of literature is ill thought."

Oglethorpe frowns and blinks in surprise. "You mistake me."

"You mistake _me_ ," Thomas counters. Then he shifts back toward the door. "Your fields will not tend themselves. I should leave."

Oglethorpe looks for a moment as though he may order Thomas to stay. Then he turns around back toward his desk. "Go." Thomas opens the door but before he can step out, he hears Oglethorpe say, "Perhaps a different book next time."

Thomas walks out into the hall, Will waiting by the main door. As they walk back out into the Georgia sun and heat, Thomas thinks he has more scars than he can see.

* * *

A man by the name of Robert stops at Thomas' bunk just as they retire from dinner and work that evening. He holds out a book with a deep red cover. "He said to tell you, this one might be a better start."

The book is _The Canterbury Tales_. Thomas laughs once. Better indeed.

"Thank you," he says to the man as he walks away and Thomas wonders if Oglethorpe intended to make Thomas laugh.

"A book?" Thomas looks up at Christopher now standing in the other man's place. He tilts his head so he may read the spine. He raises his eyebrows. "Bit bawdy at times, isn't that one?"

Thomas grins. "I think this might be a joke."

"What kind of a joke?"

"Perhaps he is telling me not to be quite so serious."

"Oglethorpe?" Christopher moves up along the far side of Christopher's bed as Thomas opens the book. "Are you two reading together now?"

Thomas runs a hand down the pages, remembers the feeling of paper, the weight of a book. He sees words on the page, prose and speech. He remembers sitting in a window as the rain drummed patterns on the glass, Miranda humming to herself and James' quill scratching on paper. He remembers a book in his hand and serenity all around him.

"Have you read this?"

Christopher makes a face. "Not recently and, I must admit, not in its entirety."

"And what did you skip?"

"Well, a tale from a monk or nun…"

Thomas chuckles. "You might be surprised."

"Oh, I think such now but I was far younger then."

Thomas nods almost to himself. He was younger, he was naive, only five years or six or four, sometimes he is not sure, but in so short a time Thomas feels he may have aged fifty years. "Younger…. Yes…"

"Might I read it with you?"

Thomas looks up at Christopher. Christopher leans against the wall, arms crossed. Thomas' eye follows the line Christopher's stance makes down his arm and the curve of his hip. Thomas slides over enough on his small bed. Christopher sits beside him, his leg curled under him and to the side so they manage the space well enough. Thomas opens the book as Christopher's shoulder presses against his own.

* * *

Oglethorpe's requests to speak with Thomas and his sending of books are infrequent. Thomas still remains a prisoner as the rest of them, working the fields in whatever manner the month may be in long days in the hot sun. He sweats and strains and watches as the thin wisp of a man Bedlam made him changes into muscle and strength which he did not have even before his first cage. Yet every so often, Will appears at breakfast or dinner and call his name. Thomas enters Oglethorpe's study and a book will wait on a circular table with a chair near Oglethorpe's desk.

"Have you read Shakespeare?" Oglethorpe asks. "I know one once spoke more of John Fletcher, perhaps, but there is much to be said of Shakespeare of late."

"I think Shakespeare knows how to mock society."

Thomas soon realizes he need not define Oglethorpe, his position as master and this discourse with Thomas as if still an equal. These conversations and books and respites to the manor are not a trap or a danger. It is simply that Oglethorpe seems lonely and has no one to talk to.

Thomas reads again. He feels books in his hands, pages with crisp edges, words he has read before and forgotten or locked too far away. He hears Miranda's voice when he reads, sees James' face at the foot of the bed. It hurts but it soothes him too. Christopher sits beside him sometimes, whispers the words as they read together. A part of him thinks it a betrayal but another part tells him life moves forward.

"Do you read French?" Oglethorpe asks.

"And German," Thomas counters, "and Latin should you wish a return to schooling."

He makes Oglethorpe laugh. It reminds him of Peter and often unsettles him. But Thomas reminds himself that Oglethorpe is not the one who ruined his life, he is merely his benevolent jailor. Thomas manages to make the man cross as well, arguing the points he knows Oglethorpe opposes. At times Thomas hates the man himself, sees his own past naiveté and blindness in what Oglethorpe attempts to create in this new world. Is this plantation the Eden he would think or just another work camp? Oglethorpe is not a friend; Thomas cannot even tell if he likes the man but it is a change, it is something of a life.

* * *

The end of the harvest season draws near. The fields look strange with the leaves gone and the stalks chopped low. Thomas helps to load canes onto carts to be taken away to the sugar mill in town. They harvested the hardy plants from last year and then on to the new ones as they grew tall enough.

"If these plants last into next season we won't have to plant as much then, yeah?" Brian asks as he wields his machete.

"Unless they clear enough land to make more fields," George grumbles. "Have heard Mark talk of –"

"But they cannot keep going on forever, right?"

"Don't worry," Christopher interrupts, "if we run out of sugar cane we still have cotton fields they can put us in."

Brian sighs and Christopher shoots an amused look at Thomas. Thomas cannot help but smile as the two of them shove more of the canes back into line. As their hands brush on the edge of the cart, Thomas realizes he has been at the plantation now for more than a year.

* * *

"Have you ever considered that some of the people imprisoned in your plantation do not belong here?" Thomas asks one day in Oglethorpe's study.

"Such as yourself?"

"I am not the only one."

"They, and you, were imprisoned in England. I am simply giving them some humanity but they are still criminals."

"None are imprisoned unjustly," Thomas replies with obvious question in his tone.

"English law –"

"Never makes mistakes?" Thomas interrupts.

"It may have faults in its execution," he retorts. "But it is not wholly wrong; it serves its rightful purpose. If a man falls into debt it is not due to an abundance of good."

"And how many here were imprisoned for political reasons more than anything to do with crime or madness?" Thomas continues, pushing the issue.

"This does not include you, sir." Oglethorpe snaps his book closed. "I know the true reason for your incarceration despite what London rumor may whisper."

Thomas laughs; of course. He wondered how long it would be before they crossed this threshold. "Ah yes. The 'true' reason."

"Your unnatural appetites."

"Appetites." Thomas thinks it funny the words society uses to categorize that which they fear to speak aloud, something so simple as a love unlike their own. "You may have such ideas about the reason for my years under lock and key reversed."

"Whatever the reason you found yourself in Bedlam originally, such deviation is well enough to keep you there, something so profane."

Thomas stands from his chair, pacing now and shoots Oglethorpe a glare. "Then why these conversations? If I disgust you so why speak to me at all?"

"I endeavor here to give all men a chance at redemption. Yours is not excluded from that." Oglethorpe purses his lips. "And your... tastes do not negate your intelligence and conversation."

"I suppose I should be flattered." He moves around the edge of the room, touching the spines of books. He looks at Oglethorpe again and tilts his head. "You consider intelligence to be more important than passions? Then why imprison a man for his love and not for idiocy or gross errors of judgement? I could give you many a man in no less a place as parliament who would have levied a crime as deep in his idiocy as I did in my 'tastes' as you say."

"That is hardly the point!" Oglethorpe says with some chagrin.

Thomas raises his eyebrows in question. "Then what should the point be, sir? Should the point be that, perhaps, society has it wrong?"

Oglethorpe opens his mouth but does not appear to have a retort. He closes it again then stands and pulls a volume from the shelf. "I assume you have read Homer but what of the _Cypria_?"

The conversation shuts and changes as Oglethorpe holds out the book. Thomas feels himself the winner. Yet he also feels oddly grateful. Oglethorpe knows but, despite his censure, still wishes to speak with Thomas. Perhaps Oglethorpe's new world of hope is not such a fantasy.

* * *

When it is time to plant again, there are still some fields newly plowed and waiting for sugar cane seeds. The five hundred acres increased to six hundred and some of the plants look as though they might not survive. Thomas and Christopher work together to uproot some of the failing plants so they can make space for new seeds instead.

"Did you know Oglethorpe before you were sent here?" Thomas asks.

Christopher gives him a strange look. "Why do you ask that?"

"You have been here almost from this place's inception, you said."

"Yes."

"And you are not a debtor."

Christopher laughs once as he wipes some sweat from his brow then bends again to chop at the rotted base of one sugar cane plant. "Are you trying to ask me what I did to be sent here, Thomas?"

"I am asking what your life was like before here."

Christopher glances up at Thomas. "I did not farm."

"Nor did I." Thomas pulls out a small slip of a plant from the earth and tosses it to the pile they have made between fields. "I think I can see you on an estate." Thomas smiles playfully. "A good horseman maybe."

Christopher laughs again. "Oh no, horses were never my favored pass time. My sister called me a hopeless rider but most were hopeless compared to her." Christopher's lips twist. "She died in childbirth."

Thomas says nothing. Christopher stands up straight, pushing on the plant with his foot where he had been cutting until it makes a loud cracking noise and bends over.

"You ask about my life before." Christopher looks at Thomas again. "I imagine it was much like yours, pampered and privileged with money and a title and something that seems very far away now."

"Yes."

"Do you really wish to think back to that, to what we've lost?"

Thomas breathes in slowly. "I think I should never wish to forget the happiness and hope I had but I also do not try to live there any longer."

"Not just in memory," Christopher whispers.

Thomas does not try to live in those memories because he knows where they lead and he will not corrupt the joy with the sorrow and pain and desperation that came after. He can look at them as pictures – as auburn hair and heavy weight, a pale blue gown and a high laugh, devoted eyes and a freckled back, the two of them near him, a hand in each of his, a kiss beside a dining room table and a man trembling in his arms.

"Life is something else now, you are right," Thomas says. "I should not have asked you."

Christopher shakes his head. "No, it is fine. I have wished to ask you as well." His eyes tick away, slide slowly down the off color linen of Thomas' shirt. "I have wished to ask why you smile sometimes at the sun, how you have come to read so many books, why you used to shake or freeze at things that have no danger in them. But that does not matter, does it?"

Thomas stares at him and can only say. "No."

Christopher reaches out and touches Thomas hand over where the marks of Thomas' fingernails once pressed until his skin broke. Thomas does not pull away until Christopher's thumb brushes a scar on Thomas' wrist.

"Calloused now," Christopher says, his eyes still on Thomas' hands. Then he looks up to Thomas' face again. "Does it bother you?"

Thomas shakes his head. "It protects one's hands, doesn't it?"

"From?"

Despite the past behind them and the now where they stand, Thomas knows what Christopher might wish to ask and some part of Thomas might tell him.

"From many things," Thomas says and sounds mysterious as he never used to be and Christopher smiles. His eyes are green like the trees, like the forest, like something new.

* * *

Thomas still wakes up sometimes in the night, his heart beating fast and his breath tight. He still feels chains around his ankles, stone walls at his back, insistent hands at his hips or water over his head. He still needs to stand up and breathe the night air at the window.

The locks on the barracks door are hardly complex, something which can be rattled into opening, so Thomas sneaks outside. He leans against the wall of the barracks near where his own bed lies inside until his breath calms. His barracks lies at the end of the line, all of them close to the woods. He stares into the dark of the forest, thinks of the leagues of land he cannot see. He breathes into the darkness until the memories diminish and the feeling on his skin is only the wind alone.

Until he is not alone.

Christopher leans against the wall beside Thomas. His hand gently touches Thomas forearm, slips down to the scars on his wrist. Thomas does not pull away.

"Why do you wake up at night?" Christopher asks.

Thomas answers him. "I was in Bedlam."

Christopher looks down and lifts Thomas' arm, his finger tracing one scar. Thomas notices they appear paler now than before but perhaps that is only the dim light.

"For how long?"

"Years."

Christopher looks up from Thomas' scars to his face. "Why?"

"Because of my father. Because of politics. Because of who I am."

"Who you are?"

"Why are you here now, Christopher?" Thomas asks in turn. "Where were you in England?"

"Newgate, for a year and two months."

Thomas raises his eyebrows. "You know that closely?"

"A year, two months, one week, and three days." Christopher smiles, it is neither happy nor sad. It simply is. "I understand." He presses his thumb against Thomas' scars. "I understand these."

"Why are you here?" Thomas asks again.

"Why are _you_ here?" Christopher asks right back.

They stare at each other. The moon is waxing now, near half full so Thomas sees the green of Christopher's eyes in the moonlight. The green is dark like the woods, almost black. His hair curls a little at his temple and Thomas pushes some of it back behind Christopher's ear revealing a scar just before Christopher's hairline Thomas has not seen before. Thomas' hand lingers at the edge of Christopher's jaw.

Christopher lays his palm against Thomas' chest, takes one step forward and presses his lips to Thomas'. Thomas closes his eyes – he does not think of James – holds tight to Christopher's jaw. He listens to the sound of the wind in the trees, the buzz of crickets in the grass, something safe, something different, and Thomas kisses him back.


	5. Christopher

Savannah is warm most of the year, even the winters are mild by comparison to bone chilling London. Thomas thinks, at times, he has sweat more in his life these past two years than the other decades all combined. His hands are as calloused as they have ever been, his skin tanner than he could imagine it becoming and his body practically brand new, hard and strong.

"Never thought you'd look like a working man," Mark says to him in the field as they crouch low in the dirt tending to newly sprouted plants.

"I am surprised myself."

Thomas knows how to farm now. He uses a hoe as well as a pen. He teaches new prisoners to plant as he once gave speeches in parliament. He is new. He is no longer Thomas Hamilton. He is simply Thomas.

Thomas enjoys walking through the rows of sugar cane, feeling the leaves scratch over his face and hands. The plants tower over him by almost a foot when they reach their highest. He likes to feel lost in the fields, almost as if he were alone with the sun and this new world. More often, however, he is not alone. Christopher walks with him.

"These plants may last another year," Christopher says as they walk toward the end of a row to cut more leaves from the canes at the end of harvest now.

"Did you plant these first ones?"

Christopher chuckles. "Yes, all alone too. One man to two hundred acres. Are you impressed?"

Thomas smiles. "Does it give you some pride to see them flourish?"

Christopher looks up at the plants as they walk on, his fingers searching out Thomas. "Perhaps. They are not truly mine. I simply work them."

Christopher's fingers brush up and down Thomas' forearm, rough fingertips and warmth. Thomas watches Christopher's hand as it moves over his skin. "Do you think Oglethorpe would call them his, find a pride you do not?"

"I think Oglethorpe spends more of his time thinking about philosophy and reform than he does about his fields. They are a means to an end."

Thomas chuckles. "Perhaps."

"I think about you," Christopher says as he taps the back of Thomas' hand.

"My philosophy?"

Christopher curls his fingers over Thomas'. "I think how you have less philosophy than you must have had before now. I think about you before you were here."

"You did not know me then."

"I know you now."

Thomas rubs his thumb over Christopher's palm. "And what am I now?"

"You are thoughtful. You are intelligent, a man who enjoys debate in any instance, be it our plantation master or our fellow prisoner."

Thomas chuckles. "Oh, yes."

"You are something of a mystery."

Thomas chuckles. "I do not aim to be."

"You are curious, I think, even after the world has harmed you." Thomas looks away. "I think about those who have harmed you." Christopher's fingers slide up and over Thomas' scars on his wrist.

"Christopher..."

"I think about when you smile." Thomas looks at Christopher, the leaves over his head and touching his shoulders. Christopher smiles as if in example. "I think of how when you smile, I always want to kiss you."

"I fear I must cause you too much distraction." Thomas says as they reach the end of the row.

Christopher crouches low at the first plant, shooting a look up at Thomas. "You smile less than you may believe you do."

Thomas passes the machete to Christopher, holding the plant in place near the top. "I would believe that."

"I hope you smile more now perhaps."

Thomas does smile then as Christopher chops at the lowest leaves. "I do."

* * *

The plantation has grown to almost a hundred prisoners now. Each barracks holds two dozen men and a few sleep in smaller huts near the house, Tad being one of them. The cotton fields have expanded, though certainly not a match yet for the sugar cane.

"I hear they're talking about tobacco," Patrick says as he hoes dirt around waist high plants, brown hair in his face. "Never liked the stuff myself."

"What, you an opium man?" Mark jokes. "Lie on some red and gold pillows?"

Patrick shoots him a glare while Bartholomew laughs somewhere hidden among the taller plants. "Jest as you will, boy, but an opium den makes for a fine night!"

"Try the sugar instead," Christopher says as he brings around a jug of water with a ladle in his hand. "You have it here."

"Oh my, the altar boy advocates for stealing now?" Mark says as he takes the ladle from Christopher's hand and drinks.

Christopher's eyes tick to Thomas for a moment then away again. "I was no altar boy."

"Is tobacco any easier to farm than sugar cane?" A newer man asks, young and still thin with some mix of India in his blood if Thomas is right. "They don't grow so big, right?"

Patrick scoffs. "You ask me? I've only farmed this."

"Canes too tough for you?" Bartholomew says as he appears from the rows to drink some of the water Christopher brought. "You forget you're still in jail?"

"I..." The boy trips once in a furrow. "It's a plantation, better yea?"

All the men in the field, Thomas included, make noises like confirmation yet still somehow subdued and dark. Thomas wonders at an entire class of men knowing the same truths despite their different pasts.

"I'd rather here than locked in some room," the boy says, hoeing at the dirt with renewed vigor. "Walls around yea and bars and nothing to do but pace all day? Couldn't stand that. I couldn't."

Thomas sees Mark staring at the dirt, his hand tight around his machete. Patrick frowns in much the same vein, stoops to pull at weeds trying to curl around one sugar cane plant. Bartholomew walks over to the young man and puts a hand on his shoulder so he slows down.

"Yea, lad," Bartholomew says, "it's better here."

Thomas hikes the basket of leaves on his shoulder up higher as he walks over beside Christopher. Christopher holds out the ladle to him. Thomas takes it, his fingers covering Christopher's. He sips the cool water then lets the ladle slip back into the bucket, his hand still over Christopher's.

"It is better here," he says quietly to Christopher.

* * *

In the barracks, Thomas and Christopher read together often. Oglethorpe's solitude has not yet abated and Thomas is favored with a slowly changing option of books. At times, Oglethorpe even allows Thomas to choose a book or two to take for himself to read.

"I cannot read more than a book at a time and your nights certainly involve no such affairs to fill them as my own do."

Thomas takes John Locke from the shelves, reads his treatises on government; Thomas Hobbes, _Leviathan_ , politics and rule of law that used to matter more than now. He chooses more fantastical things, the old poetry of _Beowulf_ or books meant to amuse with the new satire of Jonathan Swift. He chooses books to ease his soul, books Christopher may enjoy too.

Thomas turns the pages, reading slower than Christopher. Christopher sometimes brings a journal with him, jotting things down from their more philosophical or political reads. Thomas watches his hand on the quill, his letters small and tight. They sit shoulder to shoulder on the bed, no man given any reason to find fault in them. Thomas whispers things, a word about when he first read the book or his thoughts at something new. Christopher smiles every time, touches Thomas' hand or his knee, until Will or another overseer commands them to snuff candles.

"We manage but a chapter a night, only a dozen pages with their adherence to time." Christopher stands from Thomas' cot. "Must have us rested for our long hours of work."

Thomas closes the book. "We are in no rush here and are you not tired from such long hours at work?"

Christopher gives him a look, bending low near Thomas' cheek. "I would rather sit here with you." Then he blows out the candle.

* * *

Thomas still wakes in the night occasionally – sometimes shaking, sometimes with tears, sometimes because he merely wakes with no definable cause. He stands quietly from his cot and crosses to Christopher's in the opposite row, slides a hand over Christopher's arm or cheek. Christopher is a light sleeper and he always rises to follow Thomas.

Sometimes it is even Christopher who crouches low beside Thomas bed, whispering, "the moon is bright, come outside."

Even in the colder winter months, they steal outside together. They sit against the furthest wall of the barracks hidden on the other side of the chimney bricks, wrapped together in a blanket if it is cold enough to merit. At times, they say nothing, calming private demons in safe company. They watch the moon wax and wane, the stars slide in their fixed formations across the sky, the sounds of animals in the woods and the trees creaking with the wind.

Christopher kisses Thomas' neck, a spot he always returns to, just under Thomas' jaw. It makes Thomas sigh each time. Thomas kisses Christopher's lips, over and over, fuller than any man's have a right to be and always a draw. Christopher likes to touch – his hand curled around Thomas' leg, dipping under Thomas' shirt, brushing back and forth over Thomas' beard, scratching at the base of Thomas' neck, tracing every feature of Thomas' face.

Christopher says, "I still wonder if you are real."

"Why?"

"Because how could I have found you here?"

They are not always so chaste. It takes little time once they have moved in this direction for their fingers to search under clothes. Their hands make short work of desire fueled by kisses and touch. They do not dare anything more intimate out in the open despite the sleep of the plantation around them.

More often, however, they simply talk. They talk of the plantation, their guesses at the other men's pasts beyond the little they know.

"Patrick bankrupted his family from gambling, I am sure," Christopher says with false solemnity.

Thomas nods back. "Certainly, he would have no skill at bluffing. Bartholomew is no doubt a sailor."

"Offended Mark's precious Navy who scorned him too." Christopher gives Thomas a serious look. "And Matthew? His is a money error as well."

"Horses perhaps?"

"Or women?" They give each other a look then smile. Christopher shrugs. "Hard to tell with the gentry."

Thomas pinches Christopher's leg. "Easier with a lord?"

Christopher chuckles and bats his hand. "Easier with one lord I know of."

They talk of present matters, the rain they need, the height of the plants, the new horses, the profits they might estimate, the growth of Savannah they hear of. They do not talk about Bedlam or Newgate, not in anything more than small words.

"From a guard and a wall," Christopher says of the scar on his head.

"From chains," Thomas says of the scars on his wrists and ankles.

Yet they do talk of the past, of themselves.

"I was a member of the House of Lords in England and my task was Nassau."

Christopher chuckles. "The pirates?"

"Yes."

"I can imagine you on the beach attempting a speech on progress of some kind as the men brawl and drink around you."

Thomas chuckles as well. "Not as such."

"Oh, were you not a reformer then? I have heard your talk at table about debtor's prisons and seen such books you read. No doubt you were worse when the cruelties of the world had not yet touched you."

Thomas smiles as he threads his fingers with Christopher's and rubs the back of Christopher's hand with his other. "I thought to pardon them all." Christopher makes a sudden scoffing noise. "Yes," Thomas continues. "Those around me thought much the same."

"Perhaps you thought most men good then."

"Perhaps I did."

Christopher sits up straighter so he may reach Thomas' cheek with his lips. He kisses near Thomas' ear and down toward his chin. "And the rest of your life?" Christopher kisses the corner of Thomas' mouth. "Did you have a wife?"

"Yes." Thomas turns his head toward Christopher, Christopher's face half shadowed with the moon now low and his eyes dark. Thomas kisses his lips once. "I cared for her very much. You had a wife?" Thomas purses his lips in amusement. "A small woman with blond hair and rosy cheeks?"

Christopher laughs once, a wide grin over his face that Thomas thinks is beautiful – different from the quiet smiles of James seen in the dips of his head or the sink of a pillow, lips together but so fond and loving to break Thomas' heart.

"No," Christopher says, "she was near as tall as I with black hair. We were only married a year before she died with our first child." Christopher turns his head away, his grin fading a little. "I suppose I should have mourned them more."

"But you did not love her?"

Christopher looks back at Thomas. "That does not mean I wished her death."

They do not always simply sit outside the barracks at night. Sometimes they dare to walk together, close to the line of the trees out of the moonlight. The guards do not often patrol the grounds of the plantation at night; the woods are thick and wall around Oglethorpe's idealistic jail is high enough. This does not mean, however, the overseers never do patrol nor that none might look from the window of any building and see. Thomas has learned caution through hard lessons he would rather not repeat.

They walk through the underbrush, away from the barracks, their voices low so they do not carry. Christopher holds Thomas' hand or slides his arm low around Thomas' back. Thomas looks down at him, his hair long enough now to tie back at the base of his neck. Thomas' own hair has grown shaggy but he still cuts it short whenever it reaches his ears. He could not say why, perhaps it is a habit he wants to keep or perhaps he simply likes it best that way – he remembers the feeling of James' hands in his hair, brushing from his cheek to the back of his head slowly until he would pull Thomas close for a kiss.

"I loved a man in London," Thomas tells Christopher.

Christopher chuckles. "I have loved many men."

Thomas smiles a little but he cannot jest yet, not about his love. "I may have loved before him, smaller and fleeting infatuations, but he was..."

Christopher's hand tightens around Thomas' as he trails off. "Yes?"

"He was my truest love," Thomas whispers, "and I lost him."

They walk in silence, a moan from the trees as they move, somewhere deeper in the forest that seems to answer Thomas' pain, his guilt, his memory, his heart and the man still inside it. Then Christopher bumps Thomas' shoulder with his own and runs his other hand up Thomas', brushes past scars and thumbs his forearm. "But you have found something here."

"Something," Thomas says as he watches the stars, "yes."

* * *

The first time they have sex Thomas begins it. Perhaps Christopher knew he should wait, that Thomas was broken in certain places and must be allowed his own time. Thomas leads Christopher to a barn, hoes from other prisoners in hand to return to their places. Once inside the barn, Thomas fits the locking beam in place turning back to Christopher.

"Thomas?" Christopher asks, a small smile on his face and the tools dropped on the ground. He knows.

"Have we talked enough?"

Christopher chuckles. "We have done more than talk."

"Not enough."

Christopher nods once then crowds Thomas back against the barn wall and kisses him. They both feel warm and sweaty, the sun still in their skin from a long day at work. Christopher keeps his hands up in Thomas' hair, pushing and pulling, his fingers scratching over Thomas' scalp. It makes Thomas smile into their kiss.

"I love your hair," Christopher says over Thomas' lips.

"I noticed."

Christopher kisses along Thomas' neck, bites at his chin and beard. Thomas gasps and runs his hands over Christopher's shirt and the muscled chest beneath – so like James. Thomas pulls his hand back quickly, touches the back of Christopher's head instead, pulling his hair free, and grips Christopher's hip with his other. Christopher gasps as Thomas slides his fingers in the gap between Christopher's shirt and breeches. Christopher kisses Thomas' lips again, chapped but insistent, while his hands move to unbutton the front of Thomas' breeches. Then Christopher breaks their kiss, pushing Thomas' shoulder to turn him around against the barn wall.

Thomas freezes.

– _it is dark and hands tight on his hips pushing him down and over his back and spreading his legs wider, touching –_

– _and not again, has it not been enough times, how long and it hurts more each time and he is bleeding but Jonathan does not notice, does not care and –_

– _Thomas claws at the sheets but Jonathan holds his arms down and why has the sun not risen yet, will it be dark forever –_

– _and please not again –_

"Thomas!"

Thomas opens his eyes, feels Christopher's warm hands on his neck and cheeks. Thomas' back is against the wall again and Christopher stares at him, his eyes wide.

"Thomas? Thomas! Say something!"

"Christopher," Thomas replies.

Christopher visibly relaxes, his fingers rubbing a line just above Thomas' beard. Christopher breathes out slowly then rests his forehead against Thomas' cheek. Thomas' hands settle low on Christopher's back. He looks around the barn behind them – one of the carts for the sugar cane, tools hanging on the wall, some barrels in one corner and another half of the barn piled high with sacks full of cotton.

"I am well," Thomas whispers. "I did intend... I am well, Christopher."

Christopher steps back so Thomas may see his face. He nods once then pulls his hands away. "Good."

He moves to walk back toward the barn door but Thomas grasps his hand. "Wait." Christopher looks back at Thomas, confused, he truly does not expect more. "Wait," Thomas says again. "I want this."

"Thomas..."

"I do."

"I do not wish to hurt you."

"You have not hurt me. You will not." He squeezes Christopher's hand. "My demons are not of your making."

Thomas pulls Christopher close to him, kisses his lips until Christopher kisses him back again. Then Thomas curves around Christopher and leads him to a low pile of cotton sacks. Thomas pulls at the knot of Christopher's breeches, pushing them and his smallclothes down over Christopher's hips. His breath hitches as Thomas slides his hands up to Christopher's shoulders giving them a gentle nudge until Christopher sits on the burlap bags. Thomas toes his shoes off then works on his breeches.

"Thomas…" Christopher says breathlessly, his hands fidgeting at his sides as if can barely control them not to grab at Thomas.

Thomas smiles as he steps out of his breeches. "Christopher."

Then Thomas straddles Christopher's lap.

It is too quiet in the barn, the noise of their breath and movements loud in the empty space. Thomas keeps his hands on Christopher's neck as Thomas rides him and Christopher holds tightly to his thighs.

Thomas thinks of James like this or their places reversed or James' kisses on his neck or James pulling Thomas knees against his hips or the taste of James on his lips; James wearing nothing but a ribbon around his hair, James' skin with freckles on his shoulders, a scar on his collar bone, the sound of his voice when Thomas coaxed moans and whispered words from him. James' beautiful blue eyes close, above him, beside him, eyes of the deep blue sea and Thomas could drown in them. James, James, James...

Christopher's eyes are green staring up at him. Christopher presses kisses to Thomas' chest as he hikes up Thomas' shirt, thrusts up into him, and Thomas says, "Christopher," quietly, reminds himself this is now, not then.

Christopher kisses everywhere, touches with broad hands and Thomas thinks about those fingers touching his cut hand, the sweat of the field on Christopher's neck, his shoulder against Thomas' in the candle light, his face in the shadows and glow of the moon. Christopher.

Thomas thinks even if he should never have this again, if Christopher should disappear out of his life a second later, now at least the last time was with someone gentle, someone kind, not a violation, but with someone he cared for and cared for him. Christopher's hands maybe be rough but they are safe; Thomas may not be in love but he is happy and he is not afraid.

* * *

Thomas and Mark walk to the blacksmith early one afternoon. The plantation has many of its own skilled labor to account of the varied needs of sugar cane and cotton farming. Though they send much of their cane into Savannah to be processed into loafs for sale, they still must package and ship all their goods. They require horses, tools and food for all who live and work on the plantation. They have their own barns, stables, carriages, a pair of carpenters, John of Cork and another man, and a smith, Stephen in fact, to keep the ever constant cycling of the farm in motion.

Thomas carries a number of tools on his back while Mark pulls a cart piled with empty cotton bags. The cart itself is in need of repair as are the tools. They try to use what they have for as long as possible, even when imperfections appear. With so many workers, however, and so much to be done, things eventually break or wear.

"I thought this cart should have lasted longer," Mark complains as their near the blacksmith house. "But Tad has been using it for the manor house."

"What, new chairs for the dining room?" Thomas quips, in good humor as the cooler air of later winter cheers him.

Mark scoffs. "It doesn't matter what is in it, but Tad cannot use a thing without breaking it."

"You are hard on him."

"I have known him a month longer than you." Thomas laughs but Mark pushes on. "That is enough for his imbecility to wear on a man."

As they near the entrance to the blacksmith, Thomas suddenly hears a clang immediately followed by a shout and a scream. Thomas and Mark stop in their tracks. A wail suddenly fills the air. Thomas drops the tools, Mark lets go of the cart and they both rush into the building. As their eyes adjust to the dim, Thomas spies Stephen lying on the ground with something metal protruding from his upper chest. A black haired man Thomas does not know well crouches over Stephen.

"Oh god, I did not mean, oh god, Stephen... what should..." He turns to them, his eyes wild. "Help please! I tripped and the iron... it slipped and... There is blood, my hands, I do not..."

Stephen begins to wail once more, his hands shaking around the long metal rod still stuck in his flesh.

"Stephen is hurt!" Mark shouts out the door toward the fields. "We need help!"

Thomas hurries to the man's side, kneeling beside Stephen. "Stephen? Can you speak?"

Stephen shakes his head, knocks his back against the dirt floor. "Hot... it's..." He grits his teeth and suddenly grabs onto the cloth of Thomas' shirt, fisting his hand with a cry.

Thomas grips the metal rod, his breath coming faster. He must pull it out and they can move Stephen somewhere and find him some help. Thomas does not know what else to do. He starts to tug at the metal but Stephen cries out loudly and blood seeps out more from the wound.

"Stop!" Thomas turns abruptly and sees Christopher marching into the room. He kneels down beside Thomas. "Let go, Thomas."

Thomas pulls his hands back quickly. Christopher carries a number of rags which look stark white in the black and soot of the smith. He lays some over the site of the wound, around the rod.

"Mark, Thomas," Christopher says, "lift his shoulders so I may wrap this around him."

Mark moves to Stephen's other side and he and Thomas lift Stephen up. Stephen groans again but Christopher moves quickly, wrapped a long band of cloth around his upper chest and shoulder to keep the other cloths over the wound in place.

"You may put him down." Christopher looks up around the room quickly. "It is too dark in here. We must move him." He looks at the other man and Mark. "There is a long table in the carpenter shed, yes?"

The man falters. "I think... I have not..."

"Yes," Mark answers.

"We will move him there but first we must cut this." He points at the long rod. "It is too long." Christopher moves Stephen's arm just enough to peer beneath him. "It does not come out his back. Well..." He looks at the fire where an anvil, a hammer and some other tools lie. "Can we use something to cut this, something hot?"

"We would need a cutting iron," the man says in a rush, "but it must be on the block."

"What of pliers?" Christopher asks.

"They are not strong enough!"

Christopher sighs. "Fine, then we must simply move him and remove it then. Thomas." Thomas looks at him sharply. "How much blood do you see where you sit?"

Thomas looks around Stephen's head, the stains on his shirt and splashes on his leather apron. Thomas reaches under Stephen and feels for any more. "Some but less than I should think."

Christopher nods. "Good." Then he turns to Stephen. "Stephen, we shall remove this bar soon, but not yet. We must move you first and be ready. You must try to remain steady, do not fight us."

"It is in my chest!" Stephen says, almost frantic.

"Not for long," Christopher continues. "You can breathe well?"

"What?"

"Can you breathe well? Pay attention, and look at me now, Stephen. Your breathing?"

Stephen sucks in a deep breath, breathes out then in again, "Yes."

"Then it has not pierced your lung. That is very good."

"But I –"

"Mark, Benjamin?" They perk up. "We must move him from here but be wary of the rod. We cannot let it hit anything and worsen his wound, do you understand?"

"Yes," they say at once.

"Here!" Thomas looks up to see a man run in the door holding a bag. "The cloth."

"Take it to the carpenter's shop and inform the overseers about Stephen. Go."

The man nearly drops the bag again as he turns and rushes out the door. Christopher turns back to the situation at hand, his eyes flashing on Thomas for a brief moment. Thomas wants to grab his hand and kiss him, out of care or fear he cannot tell.

"Now, Mark and Thomas at his shoulders," Christopher says, "Benjamin ahead of us. I shall manage his legs. We shall carry him to the carpenter's outbuilding. Thomas?" Thomas nods. "Mind the bar as it is nearest to you. Ready? Go."

The three men heave at once and lift Stephen off the floor. He cries out again, grabbing at Thomas' arm and nearly hitting Mark in the nose with his elbow. They ignore his flailing, however, and hurry for the door, which Benjamin opens for them. The three men duck as they exit so the rod does not hit the doorframe. Outside, the sun surprises Thomas with the brightness but he cannot think long on it as they move, carrying Stephen toward the carpenter building fortunately not far away. Benjamin shoves the doors open, no one within at present, and they heave Stephen onto one of the working tables, knocking nails and a saw to the floor.

"Good." Christopher points at Benjamin. "I need a basin of water, more cloths, some whiskey, any small tools, tweezers will do, ask at the house."

Benjamin whirls in place and practically falls through the door in his rush.

"Christopher..." Thomas hisses, his pulse fast and his mind whirling.

Stephens seems to be bleeding more, some seeping onto the table. Thomas sees the bag near the table and picks it up. Christopher grabs it without a word and pulls more cloth from inside it, piling them up alongside Stephen. He grips Mark's arm and moves him beside Thomas. Christopher looks between the two of them quickly, bites his lip then nods to himself.

"Well, I should think Mark and I will manage if you can keep Stephen still, Thomas."

"Manage what?" Mark says in alarm though he plainly knows.

"Grip here and I here." Christopher grasps the iron rod and looks at Thomas. "Hold his shoulders as tight as you can." Christopher looks down at Stephen. "I shall not lie, this will hurt, but if you can control your reaction, do."

Stephen closes his eyes and fists his hands at his sides. Thomas grabs one of the shorter cloths and twists it into a roll. He puts it in front of Stephen's mouth. "Bite on this."

Stephen bites down, Thomas moves his hands to Stephen's shoulders and Mark grips the rod just above Christopher's hands. Christopher nods at them each in turn. "One, two, pull!"

Christopher and Mark heave upward, the rod catching in flesh for a moment. Stephen shouts and smacks his hand on the wood, his head tipping back so Thomas must shove down hard on Stephen's arms. Then the rod yanks free. Mark and Christopher both stumble backward and Stephen's head bangs against the wood. Instantly the cloth Christopher first tied around the wound turns red with blood. Christopher rushes back to the table and begins to hold cloth after cloth against the wound, pressing down and tying them around Stephen's back as he asks for more cloth from Thomas.

"Here!" Benjamin says, returning with a woman at his side carrying a large porcelain bowl of water.

Benjamin drops more cloth on the lessened pile Christopher made and then holds up a bottle. "Whiskey too."

"You?" Christopher says to the woman.

"Evelyn," she answers, "I was a midwife in Scotland."

"Good." Christopher points at a free space for the water. "We must stem the bleeding first then clean the wound as best we can after. I should not think any of the iron should have broken in the wound but we must be sure. Tweezers?"

Evelyn holds up a basket. "My sewing kit, needle and thread and scissors; it should suffice."

Christopher and Evelyn work together then, padding the wound, cutting away his ruined shirt and the heavy leather. Mark and Benjamin soon leave to put the blacksmith back to rights. Thomas hands over cloth as he is asked and holds the bowl of water. After some time, Christopher carefully pulls back the blood stained cloth to view the wound. Evelyn helps him clean it with water then Christopher adds whiskey straight into the wound. Stephen finally passes out then before Christopher begins to poke and prod in the ruined flesh. He pulls out a black chip that could be metal or coal, Thomas cannot tell. Christopher pours on more whiskey then Evelyn wipes it clean once more, blood still coming though less than before. Lastly, Christopher uses Evelyn's needle and thread to sew the open wound tight together.

Evelyn sits beside Thomas as they watch Christopher stitch up Stephen.

"Are you a prisoner here?" Thomas asks Evelyn quietly as they wait.

"Yes." She glances at him. "Everyone who is not an overseer is, but, yes, there are women among you."

Thomas nods. "I have only seen some of your number once or twice."

"Oglethorpe prefers to keep us separate to discourage any fraternization, be it wanted or not."

Thomas nods then turns to her. Her hair is strawberry blond, not dark enough to refer to as red, though the Scottish can clearly be seen in the dark freckles across her face. Her chin points sharply and her shoulders appear too broad but Thomas imagines many might call her fine.

"What is your crime?" She asks, suddenly turning toward him.

Thomas stares at her – blunt, forward, like Miranda without her poise. "I rebelled against my father, you might say. What is yours?"

She bites the edge of her lip and turns back toward Christopher. "I chose not to bear a child."

Thomas frowns. "Your own or someone else's?"

"Yes."

"Done." Thomas looks back at Christopher who watches them now, needle and scissors in hand. "We must bandage him then wait."

Evelyn and Thomas stand up to help.

Christopher and Thomas sit together in chairs near the wall as Stephen sleeps. They used the remaining cloth as a thin pillow for his head and Evelyn brought a sheet to lay over him before she left to help prepare the men's dinner. Oglethorpe visited for a brief minute or two to learn of Stephen's status; should he need to train a new blacksmith or not. The prognosis remains uncertain but Christopher is very hopeful. Now they watch Stephen breathe in the dimming light alone.

"You were a doctor?" Thomas asks.

"Yes. A surgeon. I studied in Edinburgh."

"A good surgeon then."

"I was."

"Was that what led you here?"

Christopher turns to Thomas. "You know what led me here, Thomas."

Thomas glances at Christopher, the open expression on his face. "We have not explicitly said. You have not."

"I harmed no one as a doctor any more than what can be expected with injury and illness. I had patients who died and patients who lived. It was not my professional life that sent me to Newgate and here."

Thomas nods. "My own path is perhaps less clear than that."

"The man you loved, did he betray you?"

Thomas' jaw clenches. He thinks of James the last time he saw him, a new beard on his face with such a brighter red than his hair; the look on his face when he saw Thomas walk in after three months apart. "No," Thomas says. "If anything I betrayed him with my own recklessness. Did someone betray you?"

Christopher looks away, wiping at his hands absently with a cloth, some blood still on them. After a moment, he shakes his head. "You do not know recklessness, Thomas, not as I was."

Thomas reaches out and touches Christopher's hand, making him still. Christopher glances at him. "I know you had no such recklessness today. I know you saved Stephen as none of us could. Perhaps this place is better for us now, is a penance for what we may have done before."

Christopher chuckles, and Thomas sees the levity return to his face. "I would not go so far, Thomas, but

this place has changed me, as did Newgate..." He trails off and shakes his head. Then he looks at Thomas again. "I am glad you think well of me."

Thomas smiles. He shifts closer in his chair, kissing Christopher's cheek. "I do."

* * *

Christopher and Thomas lie together on a pair of thin mattresses laid side by side. Christopher showed Thomas an upper level in one of the supply barns which stores extra bedding, crates of clothing and linen. It seemed a gift. They still wear their shirts and smallclothes, put back on only should they need to flee in a hurry. It is after midnight though not near sunrise yet. They have only been away from the barracks an hour but should not stay here much longer. It would not be prudent to be found missing together.

Christopher's hand rests on Thomas' neck, his thumb stroking down into the hollow of Thomas' throat then back up again in a lazy line. His head lies propped up on his arm close enough to Thomas' face that he may press kisses over Thomas' eyelids and forehead.

"We should return," Thomas murmurs though makes no move to stand.

"We can wait a bit longer."

"If we wait too long we will fall asleep here."

"Yes, and then they should send us to prison."

Thomas laughs though the sentiment is not exactly funny.

"I..." Christopher's hand stops moving. "I did not think I would survive prison."

Thomas opens his eyes at the change in Christopher's tone. Christopher stares past Thomas, looking at something not there. "What happened?" Thomas asks because he knows Christopher needs to say it this time.

"I was..." Christopher's lips twist. "There is no better word; in England I was a rake. In Edinburgh, in Manchester, London. Before I was married, when I was, after, she did not matter. I knew what I wanted and I found it. It is not truly difficult nor rare as the world might make us think. In cities, at least, one can find a willing man if they know where to look. I... was young and reckless, so reckless. I took men to bed thinking why should anyone take notice; why should they care or why should I be wary? I was no lord with a title to protect or land in holding. I was merely a doctor. Who would hold such indiscretions against me? So I..." Christopher swallows, shutting his eyes. Thomas touches his cheek so Christopher looks at him again. "I did not tell you before. Perhaps I should have."

"Why?"

"Because, were I a woman, would you not call me a whore?"

Thomas frowns. "No. Many men, and women, may act as you did. It is not a shame."

Christopher shakes his head against the mattress and turns so he lies on his back. "Perhaps, but in my pleasures I took no precautions for my own protection. A man may dally with women and find nothing to fear." Christopher smirks with a shadow of mirth. "Except disease, but a man such as myself, as us... well, I did not think I was worth betraying."

"But you were."

Christopher smiles in a grim way, glancing at Thomas. "A doctor may not be rich but nor is he poor."

"And?"

"And one man saw fit to blackmail me then, once he had his money, to inform the authorities of the perverted doctor."

"I am sorry for you," Thomas says quietly.

"No." Christopher blows out a breath, rolls over once more and touches Thomas' hair, slowly running his hand down from Thomas' brow to his neck. "I think it has improved me in some ways. I am different now, cautious."

Thomas gives him a wry look. "I think most here have learned caution in some manner."

Christopher nods. "At a cost?"

"Yes." Thomas kisses Christopher' lips lightly, sliding them closer together. "In Bedlam, I... was forced to..." Thomas swallows. He sees a bed in a room and too much time.

"You do not need to tell me," Christopher interrupts.

"No," Thomas insists. "No, you see, before I was a man who attempted to feel no shame, not for who I was or what I believed or whom I loved."

Christopher lets his hand slide down to Thomas' chest. "But?"

"But in Bedlam I tried to pay for an escape." Thomas keeps Christopher's eye contact. "I was lied to. And this... I do not feel shame exactly for what happened. That was anger. I was angry for some time. No, I feel shame now that I should have let myself believe him in the first place."

Christopher kisses Thomas quickly, hard so Thomas cannot breathe. He runs his hands under Thomas' shirt over scars most never see. "I think if our places had been reversed I would have done just the same. I can only find relief now in that our pasts are behind us and we are here instead." He suddenly grins in a mocking manner. "On Master Oglethorpe's reformer plantation for debtors and miscreants."

Thomas chuckles despite their dark conversation, Christopher turning them cheerful again so easily, so effortlessly. "Hidden in a barn?"

"In the latest plantation fashion, white linen on spare mattresses."

If James were alive, Thomas decides James would be insanely jealous of Christopher but he would also like Christopher despite himself.

Christopher rolls on top of Thomas, kisses his lips. "And I, the lucky man, with the most beautiful gem of the new world in my arms."

Thomas laughs again, kisses Christopher and wants to lie there all night, safe and alone.

* * *

The rain starts a half hour before their normal end of day in the fields. The sky grows gray and dark sooner than the sunset but they attempt to continue on with the harvest, better to get more cane and cotton indoors first. Thomas and Brian lead a horse and cart into one of the storage barns just as the first drops fall.

"Does this mean we finish early?" Brian asks.

"Whatever for?" Thomas quips with some levity. "We can work while wet."

They work through the rain to cover already harvested crops in wagons and move them to shelter. Thomas sees men running past carrying bags with fresh picked cotton, even more susceptible to the danger of rain and rot. Yet within an hour, the rain is a deluge. The rain falls so thick Thomas sees only a yard ahead of himself, the rest of the plantation turning into a blur of gray and furious sound.

The overseers shout for all equipment to be put away as fast as possible, any harvest left not in a cart must be abandoned. The water begins to squish out of the soil where Thomas steps and the plow he attempts to drag to safety keeps slipping from his grasp with the water.

"Only one cart left!" Mark shouts as he runs by Thomas back toward the field, Brian at his heels with water bending his hat near flat.

"Here." Christopher suddenly appears beside Thomas and grabs the other end of the plow so they may carry it instead of Thomas only dragging it. "Let us just put it in the cotton shed. It is closer."

"The rot could –"

"If the cotton will rot it will not be from the plow or us."

It takes them less time to reach the cotton shed, though they trip several times in pools of water, Christopher once running right into a new man, called Tom not Thomas, because the water ran so into his eyes. Thunder sounds over their heads and Thomas sees at least one flash of lighting etch across the sky.

Inside the shed, they shove the plow into a corner, water falling more from them now than anything. Inside Tad pushes a giant pail under a leak coming from the ceiling, more than a drip but certainly not a river.

"Cannot hit the cotton," he says, "I have to keep the cotton dry."

Thomas nods. "Yes." He looks up at the crack between beams at the roof. "That should service."

"Until it overflows," Christopher mutters.

The cotton bags lie on racks half a foot off the ground, for just such instances. Yet, Thomas worries with the intensity of the rain will this area flood? Would all the crop be lost?

"And there is supposed to be less rain in the summer most years," Christopher says, speaking Thomas' mind.

A crack of thunder suddenly makes Thomas and Christopher jump in surprise. Tad stands still, his ear cocked.

"Five point two seconds," Tad says.

Thomas frowns but before he can ask Tad what he means, another roll of thunder breaks the stillness.

Tad nods. "Five point five seconds."

Christopher looks at Thomas then the thunder comes, five seconds later as Tad says. Christopher smiles at Tad as he mutters another time for thunder to come.

"The storm must be right over us now," Christopher says.

"But how long should it last?" Thomas asks.

The door to the shed bangs open. Thomas turns to see Matthew with Mark behind him. Matthew gestures with a hand, "Hurry, the horses!"

Thomas and Christopher follow the men back out into the rain. They start to run when a horse nearly knocks Mark over as it canters by.

"My god!" Christopher shouts.

"The barn door broke," Matthew explains as they run after the horse, "one spooked which set off the rest."

Thomas hears the sound of hooves, a whinny knotted up in the noise of the rain. They near the fields, the canes too close together to allow a horse easy passage.

"Hold him, hold him!" Thomas hears with the stomp of hooves and more shouts.

"Got him, now move, come on move!"

"Here, here!"

Mark skids to a halt then makes a sharp left. Christopher follows him, slipping with a flail of his arms but he keeps his feet. Thomas sees him shoot Thomas a concerned look. Matthew grabs Thomas, however, before he can speak or follow.

"Another, here!" Matthew says.

Through the sheets of rain, Thomas sees one horse attempting to hide within the short overhang at the entrance to the carpenter's barn, kicking at the door. Thomas and Matthew take either side, coming in at wide angles, Thomas nearer the horse's back. He sees the horse's eyes as they get closer, wild and its ears far back. It paws at the ground with one hoof. It could bolt at any moment. Matthew carries a rope to lead the horse back but Thomas has no idea how they might keep this horse calm enough to halter it.

"Shh, shh," Matthew coos as they near the horse, Matthew closer than Thomas with his hands up. "Shh, Cora." He makes a clicking noise with his tongue and the horse stops hoofing the dirt.

"There you are," Matthew says, his voice loud enough to be heard over the rain but still sounding like a whisper. "Come, Cora." He lowers his arms slowly as he nears her.

Thomas sees the horse watching Matthew, its obvious distress beginning to fade, its ears turning forward once more.

"That's it." Matthew smiles as he moves close enough to pat the mare on the neck. "It is only rain."

Thunder suddenly booms through the sky again. The horse jolts backward in surprise, her nostrils flaring. Matthew however, moves with her and keeps his hand on her neck, moving back to her flank.

"It is fine," Matthew says soothingly as Thomas finally stands close enough to take the rope from Matthew's outstretched hand. "Listen to me, Cora, not the noise, yes?"

The horse watches Matthew, lulled in, so Thomas may loop the rope carefully around her neck, the water making it harder to tie a knot. Matthew keeps rubbing her neck and between her eyes. He blows air into her nose so she shakes her head, water splashing them both. Then Thomas finishes tying the knot.

"Done."

Matthew takes the rope back. "Come on."

Matthew pulls the lead and they walk Cora back into the rain, across the yard and toward the stables. Thomas walks on the horse's other side, occasionally patting the horse's flank to keep her calm.

"I did not know you had such a way with horses," Thomas says to Matthew.

Matthew glances at Thomas. "I may not have been a laborer but I rode."

"Riding does not mean one is always able with horses. How many rich men care for their own horses?"

"Few," Matthew says, glancing at Thomas. Then Matthew turns away again, watching the ground where they walk. "I often preferred horses to my fellow man."

When they reach the barn, Thomas must pull hard against the growing wind to get the door open. Matthew leads the horse inside, now far more eager to walk as she sees a dry stall ahead. Inside, Thomas spies three other horses and Mark locking a stall. Thunder sounds again and all the horses shift about in their stalls, still jittery.

"One is still out," Mark says as he steps beside Thomas at the cracked door. Water plasters Mark's hair against his head, only long enough to block his eyes. "I did not see it."

"She could be in the trees," Matthew suggests as he puts Cora away.

"Which trees," Mark retorts tersely.

"She can look after herself," Thomas says watching the rain outside, rubbing uselessly at his soaked clothing. "A horse should have more instinct in this rain than us."

"Read that in one of your books?" Mark snaps. "Lightening could hit it just as well with all our open fields or it could fall in this muddy landscape, break an ankle and then that's that."

Thomas looks at him. "You could break an ankle too."

"Yea, but they won't likely shoot me for it."

"Do not be too sure." Thomas turns to see Christopher climbing down from the loft above the horse stalls. He gestures up once as he stands on the ground again. "Managed to patch that leak, though I do not know if it will hold."

Mark sighs and crosses his arm, staring out at the pounding rain. "Maybe the rain will do us all a favor and just wash this place away."

"Right and then you can go live with the Indians," Matthew replies. "Grand plan."

Mark huffs and moves away from the door, kicking at some straw but he offers no retort. Christopher moves into Mark's place beside Thomas at the door. The rain keeps falling, though the thunder comes less frequently.

"It should pass within an hour," Christopher says quietly, his hand holding the edge of the door.

"And how much of our livelihood with it," Thomas wonders.

"Ah," Christopher gives Thomas a smile. "Are we paid now? I thought us prisoners?"

Thomas' lips quirk. "I should at least wish to eat still or Matthew's prediction may come true."

"We as Indian converts?"

Thomas looks out at the rain again. "If they would have us, evil men that we are."

"I shall have you." Thomas turns to Christopher again who smiles warmly at him, water dripping from his hair and still on his skin. "Evil or not."

* * *

It is only a week after the storm that Tad falls ill. He stays in bed with a fever talking about the cold despite the early summer heat. Christopher offers to check on him as he can, prescribes water and rest.

"I have little else for him here. We have no apothecary," Christopher says. "The storm may have brought some maladies with it."

Another man from the cotton fields takes to bed the next day with the same chills and aches. Christopher talks with the overseers and Oglethorpe about making a house or hut of some kind for the ill; better to allow them a separate space where they may rest without interference. A smaller building for some of Oglethorpe's house servants is cleared out and turned into a makeshift infirmary. Christopher is not relieved from his field work to help the men but he visits at midday and in the evening.

"The doctor spirit has not left you?" Thomas asks with a smile.

Christopher retorts, "Has the reformer truly left you?"

"Is that how you see me?"

Christopher taps the handle of his hoe against Thomas' hand. "Thomas Hamilton who would pardon pirates? What would you have me see you as?"

Thomas stoops with his trowel so he must look up at Christopher. "As just a man."

Tad and his fellow man, Thomas learns he is Phillip, do not fare better after two days. Christopher checks on them more often, applying some herbal remedies brought by the nearby Creek Indians. Thomas wonders how close their cures are to those used in England. Do the civilized and the savage still battle sickness the same way when one distills their resources to only nature around them?

Four days after Tad's sickness, Christopher and Thomas work side by side in the field. Christopher chops at sugar canes ready for harvest while Thomas piles the results into a waiting cart, the sun high, the both of them sweating. Christopher shivers several times as they work, pauses to breathe harder than he should.

Thomas hears Bartholomew singing somewhere distant.

 _I am a poor sailor my story is sad,_

 _Oh once I was carefree and a brave sailor lad._

 _I courted a lassie, by night and by day,_

 _Oh but she'd gone and left me and sailed far away..._

Christopher stands still now, his hand grasped tightly around one sugar cane plant. His arm shakes and his lips part as he stares at nothing. Thomas stops what he does. He steps closer and touches Christopher's cheek.

"Christopher," he says, "you are cold."

Christopher blinks up at him, breathing slowly. He glances down at his one hand holding the machete. He looks up at Thomas again. "Oh…" Then the knife slips from Christopher's hand and he stumbles forward so Thomas must catch him before he falls.

Thomas shouts, "Help!"

Ten more men fall sick in the next two days, forcing the cotton barracks to turn into the new infirmary.

Christopher stays in the smaller building, trying to read through texts from Oglethorpe's library, asking for various local plants and making salves.

"I have heard of a plant that has helped, Cinchona, but there is none here... perhaps something similar..."

He has a younger man named Joseph running between buildings giving the remedies to those afflicted or finding him new herbs. Christopher shivers where he sits through the day, a blanket wrapped around him, and must be forced to drink water or to lie down.

Whenever Thomas tries to enter the room to help, Christopher slams the door with shouts of, "not you too!"

"It is malaria," Mark says to Thomas. "I have seen it before. Warm place like this? Not surprised."

"And there is no cure?"

Mark frowns. "What sickness really has a cure, eh? Just luck of yourself."

Thomas stands outside the door to Christopher's hut. He taps on the door with bread and water in hand. He hears Christopher inside, the turn of pages and intermittent groans.

"Let me in, Christopher." Christopher does not answer. Thomas knocks harder, tries the door handle. "If I am to fall sick, it will not be because you guard against it with a door."

"Go back to work, Thomas."

"No."

"Someone must ensure the crop is harvested or what work have we left?"

"Open the door, Christopher." Thomas hears Christopher drop something, a book perhaps and the sounds of groaning. Thomas pushes on the door, twists the handle. "Christopher..." He considers breaking down the door and holding Christopher close until he stops fighting Thomas' help. "Christopher, please!"

Thomas hears a sound close to the door. He stares at the handle but the lock does not click open. Christopher says from behind the door, "I will not risk you."

The men in the sick barracks continue in varying degrees of decline. One man seems near healthy again, sitting up in bed, while Tad's fever reaches so high his body spasms without warning, seizing and frightening those lying nearest. Oglethorpe sends for aid in town but the Savannah doctor has less knowledge than Christopher, and even less fortitude to help with a mass outbreak. In response, Oglethorpe forbids all those not infected from visiting or caring for the sick. If he cannot stop the sickness, he can contain it.

On the fifth day of his personal confinement, Christopher finally lies down on his bed and cannot rise again. Thomas ignores Oglethorpe's commandment, sits resolute beside Christopher's bed and waits for hope.

* * *

"You should not be in here."

Thomas looks up from his book, the sunlight fading now and only one candle lit in the small hut for Thomas to read by, at the sound of Christopher's voice. "Christopher?"

"You should not be in here," Christopher repeats, his voice a rasp. "I have a year more of this land than you. If I am ill, then you will fall so too."

Thomas closes his book. "You do not know that. I am well yet."

"Yet." Christopher swallows with some difficulty. Thomas reaches for the glass of water near the bed but Christopher turns his head away. "No… no, you must…."

"Must sit here. Someone must watch you and help if you should need and here I am."

Christopher blinks a few times, parts his lips, closes them again then finally says. "Joseph?"

Thomas shakes his head. "He has fallen ill too."

"More reason for no one else to expose themselves."

Thomas shrugs. "I think you see it is too late." Thomas picks up the book again – _Meditations_ , his savior and his curse, and now a time to use it as it was meant. "Allow me to read to you, may I?"

Christopher blows out a slow breath. It sounds shallow and watery. He does not reply which Thomas takes as enough of an invitation. Thomas flips through the pages, past early thanks and paragraphs too Roman. Then he reads,

"Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own, and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal."

Christopher makes a soft noise of pain, his breath turning heavy. He coughs and the sound is ragged, tearing. Thomas stares at the pages of his book as Christopher's breath slows and evens once more.

"I am fine," Christopher whispers to Thomas' silence. "Fine…"

Thomas reads on. "But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two. One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within."

Christopher chuckles, a barely audible sound. "Do you believe this still, all you have suffered… does cruelty not touch your soul?" He pauses, slowly closes his eyes then opens them. "Your Roman philosopher, does he truly know life? Are you the same man that read this then?"

Thomas stares at the page, the words and thoughts he once found so intelligent, so pleasing to the ear, something to base a life on. "I think I was younger then," Thomas answers.

"And safer," Christopher whispers.

Thomas continues reading. "The other is that all these things, which thou seest, change immediately and will no longer be; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed. The universe is transformation: life is opinion."

Christopher chuckles again. "Transformation. Perhaps in this he is right. You shall see so soon, Thomas."

Thomas looks at Christopher over the book. His face appears pale, even in the dim evening light, his hands clutching the sheets; he is in pain.

"Hush," Thomas chides quietly. "Simply listen."

Thomas opens his mouth to read again but Christopher speaks first. "You read this book to the man you loved."

Thomas pauses, his fingers thumbing the pages closer to the start of the volume where no inscription lies. He wonders how Christopher knows. "Yes."

"You should not read it to me."

Thomas closes the book. "And why not?"

"I know you did not love me."

Thomas presses his lips tight. "I care for you, Christopher, very much."

Christopher smiles at him, the expression weak and his eyes unfocused. "Yes. You did."

"Do, Christopher, I do."

Thomas watches him, sweat in beads on Christopher's forehead. Thomas puts the book down on the small table where Christopher worked in the hut. Then he leans closer and slides one hand up the sheets to cover Christopher's hand. Christopher's fingers tighten for a moment on the sheets as Thomas touches him, even his skin sensitive, but then he relaxes, his fingers twisting just enough with Thomas'. Thomas looks down at their hands, both rough workers' hands. Christopher's shake, like a tremor, weaker than Thomas' as they have never been.

Thomas looks up at Christopher's face, sees him watching their hands too. "Do you love me?" Thomas asks.

Christopher's eyes drag up from their hands to Thomas face. He looks away, the sound of bugs outside the window, nothing to truly draw his attention. Then he looks back, his expression not a smile but nor is it forlorn. "What you gave me was enough."

"I would have given you more."

Christopher shakes his head, more of a roll over the pillow. "No, you gave what you could, what you needed."

"You make me sound a rake."

Christopher smiles knowingly. "You know I do not mean it that way."

Thomas smiles back. "I know." Thomas slides the fingers of his other hand over Christopher's hand where his holds it, following the lines of bone too visible under his skin. "I am glad you were here, Christopher. I am glad we found each other."

"Yes."

"You helped me, and not just in learning to farm. Do you know that?"

"I do."

"Then can you still help me now?" Thomas asks, his voice quiet, steady but for one crack. "Can you not leave?"

Christopher stares at him, his lips parted. "Oh, Thomas." He breathes in and out, his fingertips pressing into Thomas palm.

"I care for you," Thomas says, squeezing Christopher's hand more. "Is that not enough?"

Christopher winces and cries out softly. Thomas flinches back, almost letting go of Christopher's hand. He cradles it instead, petting Christopher's skin as if Christopher might yank his hand away or disappear at any moment. He wishes he could heal Christopher now with his hands alone if need be, anything to chase away the shakes and paleness and pain.

"You are what remains to me now and I am satisfied with that." Thomas' moves closer, his knees pressed into the edge of the mattress. "Christopher, we may be trapped behind walls but it is something of a life, you and I. We have been happy, as close as we can be. I have not been happy in years. I do not wish to lose this."

"Love…" Christopher whispers.

"I have lost love, Christopher, and he is not returning to me. I would choose what I have now with you."

Christopher smiles but his eyes seem glassy and vacant. "Swimming…" he says.

Thomas frowns. "Christopher?"

"I feel… water… it is like… water…. Like swimming…" He breathes shallow and Thomas hears it in each breath, like water, like swimming.

"Please, Christopher," Thomas whispers once more, his voice raw, like he is screaming. "I do not wish to be alone again."

Christopher does not speak for two more days. He breathes and he groans, cries quietly, shifting about on the bed, shaking and sweating, barely drinking, vomiting up anything he eats. He sleeps off and on but when he opens his eyes, he is not there. Thomas clutches Christopher's hand for hours, keeps forcing Christopher to squeeze back, to move, until he no longer does. On the third day, Christopher dies.


	6. Why are you here?

A third of Oglethorpe's plantation of prisoners die from the malaria outbreak.

The first to succumb had been Tad followed by Brian then John. Christopher's helper Joseph passed quickly after only four days of suffering, likely a weak constitution to begin with. Six men from the cotton field alone are lost and their number already fewer than the other laborers on the plantation. Stephen survives, though a cough seems to linger for months after in his chest. Bartholomew dies a week later than all the rest, the last of all, and no more songs are sung in the field.

Christopher dies, his hand in Thomas' and very few of his patients saved. Thomas thinks that if Christopher had not chosen to help those in need, to be the doctor he was, he may have survived.

Thomas feels weak for several days, some aches in his arms and head, but he needs little rest and it fades quickly.

Of the ninety–six prisoners on the plantation, they lose thirty, two of them from the women, along with one overseer.

Oglethorpe calls Thomas to his study soon after the last death. "I understand Christopher Harris was a friend of yours. I wish to offer my condolences."

"You lost many among your prisoners," Thomas retorts, "many men lost friends, why comfort me?"

Oglethorpe frowns. "Our relationship is more than others here."

"Because we read in tandem?" Thomas huffs. "Because you offer me some benevolence? That does not change the nature of master and prisoner."

"I am no master," Oglethorpe hisses.

"Perhaps not as you see it."

"I wish only to offer some solace for the loss of a friend, can you not simply accept that?"

Thomas claps a hand on Oglethorpe's blue painted wall. "More than a friend."

The man starts slightly at the sound and shakes his head. "What?"

Thomas looks him in the eye. "More than a friend."

Oglethorpe's jaw suddenly clenches and he clasps his hands behind his back. He looks away in obvious discomfort then back again. His eyes narrow but he appears torn, his teeth baring then melting into a sigh.

Thomas smiles but the expression is not happy. "Do not burden yourself, sir, what punishment should you bother with now when one of us is gone?"

"You are not here to add to your sin," Oglethorpe says, his voice low. "This place is meant for redemption."

"And what would you do?" Thomas challenges. "Return me to England and Bedlam?"

"Perhaps."

Thomas laughs in a hollow way. "Then you would be the sinner."

* * *

The work becomes harder with fewer men to chop the leaves, to haul the cane, to plow the fields, tend to the animals and buildings and tools, less people to burn and plant and hoe and work. Their days sometimes last longer than ten hours, their meals shorter and the overseers harsher. Thomas emerges from the happiness he found and sees the plantation again for what it is: a prison camp.

* * *

Thomas works to uproot dying plants in one field. Fifty acres of cotton are to be changed into sugar cane and seventy acres of the sugar cane fields switched to cotton. They will need to dig up the old, worn out plants, replow and then plant again. Thomas worries at so much work being done with less of them. It felt like so much work before. How will they finish it within the season now? Most of the plants in this field have been through four seasons and will not be worth growing through another; better to pull them up and replant.

Thomas works with a machete in one hand, a shovel by his feet and cart a yard or so back. Today George works beside Thomas. They two of them do not know each other well. Yet George every ten minutes or so, starts to hum tunes, songs Bartholomew used to sing. Except that George knows little of the words so he whistles then interjects with words he chooses from the air.

"Hmm hmmm, and a mermaid I should think, hmm hmm."

Thomas begins to laugh despite himself, some welcome levity after such sorrow.

"Hmmm, a lassie and at sea, hmmm, likely sorrow, hmm hmmm, love and the sea once more, hmm hmm."

Thomas makes an undignified snort as he finally yanks a plant free with its roots. "And the moon?"

George pushes his shovel into the dirt around one plant with a nod. "Or the sun, hmm hmm, or rain or other weather." He whistles high like a finale.

Thomas laughs again as he shoves the uprooted plant onto the cart. He cannot decide exactly if he laughs because he is happy or because he is sad. He wonders if Christopher would smile at George's antics.

"Enough with that!" George and Thomas turn around to see one of the overseers waving a hand at them. He is new to the plantation; Thomas has not learned his name. "Get back to work."

"We are working," George says toward Thomas.

"Perhaps simply hum quieter."

George huffs, "It is humming." He gives Thomas an incredulous look.

"I said, back to work!" The overseer shouts.

"Wound a bit tight, wouldn't you say?" George says as he turns back to his shovel.

Thomas watches the overseer for a long moment, the rifle that the overseers used to carry on their shoulders ready laid in his hands.

"Yes," Thomas says quietly, "they are."

* * *

Thomas finds the night quieter now without Christopher. He still has a few books to occupy his time. Yet he wakes up more in the night than he has in a year. Oddly, it is not Christopher or Bedlam that wake him now. It is James.

 _'You're a good man, more people should say that.'_

 _The fear in James' eyes, the soft sighs that came later, how his lips felt the first time, the second time, the last time_

Thomas misses James more now than he has since he arrived in Savannah, since before Peter told him of James and Miranda's death, since Bedlam. He knows the hole has been there in his heart and soul. Yet he never felt it this acutely. Thomas stands near the window, his hands against the wall, framing the opening. He feels a physical ache in his stomach from the sheer thought of James no longer in this world, at being without him.

He hears James' voice, _'I am awake with you.'_

 _He lies beside James in James' small rooms. The wood of the bed is pine from the Americas and the wardrobe is cedar. James' hands slide over Thomas' chest and down to his hips. He shifts Thomas closer so their thighs press together._

 _James says, 'I feel childish wanting to say I love you.'_

 _'Maybe love is childish,' Thomas tells him, 'but it does not stop there, so say it.'_

 _James only dips his head into the pillow, somehow still shy and ashamed and hesitant._

 _So Thomas speaks for him, he says, 'I love you unlike any man before.'_

Thomas watches the trees as he has dozens of times, perhaps hundreds now. The trees remind him of Christopher but the wind sings of James, of love, of the ocean he can no longer see. Sometimes he weeps but mostly he stares and feels something carving inside him, spelling out James.

* * *

When the time comes to actually cut the cane, the overseers spread them out to a plot each. Usually they work in groups to cut the cane, hold the plants, remove any leftover leaves and stack the cane in the carts. Now each man must work alone.

"More fields to finish in a day and we have to put more men on the cotton now, can't spare you each help."

"It will only go slower!" George tries to argue.

"It had better not," Will threatens. "Your field will be done by the end of the day or you'll keep working into the dark!"

Thomas' back aches like it has not since he first arrived. He wore a hat at the start of the day but within an hour put it aside from the sweat it gathers around his brow. The machete slips out of his hand more than once from the cramping in his hand and he butchers several plants so molasses is lost in the soil. Thomas swings the machete over and over, his arm in an arch that seems to wrench his shoulder more each time. Perhaps the small taste of malaria he had has weakened him or perhaps working a field alone wears one out faster.

Thomas pauses to roll up his sleeves when he hears a cry. Thomas drops his machete and walks down the line of cut, shortened plants. He sees a man far off in the next field, younger, twenty maybe and Thomas does not know him. Then he looks the other way and sees an overseer by the name of Smith slam the butt of his rifle into Mark's chest so he falls to his knees. Thomas' eyes widen in surprise.

"What did I say? Talk back will ya?"

"Wait, I –"

Smith cracks Mark in the jaw with the end of his rifle again. Mark's head flips to the side and his hand hits the dirt to keep him upright. Smith punches him again in the same spot so Mark shouts in pain.

"You're to keep going until I tell you to stop!"

Thomas starts to run toward them, Mark almost on his back now as he tries to push himself away from Smith in the dirt. Smith, however, grabs Mark by the leg, drags him back and kicks him in the side.

"You lousy sea rat, you're lucky to be here! You keep working like I told you and shut your mouth."

Thomas reaches the edge of Mark's field, Mark on his stomach now. He pulls his head up and sees Thomas. Thomas opens his mouth to shout, to tell Smith to stop, but Mark holds up a staying hand. Thomas stops in his tracks. Smith kicks Mark once more so Mark groans, curling around himself. Then Smith backs up two steps.

"I don't want to hear it again." He turns, pushes the strap of his rifle back on his shoulder and walks away.

Thomas waits two breaths as Smith moves farther away then he runs and practically falls to his knees in the dirt beside Mark.

"Mark? Mark." He carefully rolls Mark over onto his back. "Can you talk? Mark."

Mark nods. "I can talk..." he coughs and some blood dribbles from the end of his mouth.

Thomas sees a red bruise forming along Mark's face up toward his eye. Thomas worries his jaw might be broken. Would he be able to talk with a broken jaw? Mark cradles his hands around his stomach, moaning softly.

"Can you stand?" Thomas asks. "I can take you back to the barracks. You need to –"

"No," Mark says slowly sitting up. "If I leave the field he'll do worse and to you as well."

"You cannot work like this!"

Mark shifts around onto his knees with a moan. He puts one hand on the ground and pushes up. Thomas holds his shoulders then grips Mark's hand as he staggers to his feet. He coughs again, spits out some blood. He pushes red hair out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear as if that were the most pressing problem.

"I took thirty lashes when I was twenty. Smith isn't worse than that."

"And you are not near twenty now."

Mark laughs once, blood on his teeth. "Ha, thank you, Thomas."

"Mark."

"Get back to your field before he sees you."

"Mark," Thomas hisses. "This is intolerable." Mark only laughs darkly. "They were never like this in the past," Thomas insists.

"What?" Mark snaps, though it has less fire than Mark often does. "Did you forget you are in prison? Did the sun confuse you? We can't do anything!" Mark pushes Thomas' shoulder gently. "Get back to your field."

Thomas takes a step back. He watches Mark bend slowly to pick up some canes which must have fallen in his altercation. He keeps one hand against his stomach and his mouth closed tightly. Thomas takes another step back, watching Mark's feet, watches to see if he remains stable. Then Thomas turns and walks back to his own field. Mark is not wrong, Thomas had forgotten. Thomas had allowed himself to think of this place as something good, something that could bring peace or joy; with Christopher it had been. He had forgotten it also meant a loss of choice, of freedom, of individual worth. He does not forget now.

* * *

"You act as a reformer, your plantation a place for men to find redemption and yet your overseers react now with such violence?" Oglethorpe stares as Thomas stands before him, his hands moving as they once did in parliament, calculated and pointing and lordly. "You say we are not slaves; no slavery in Savannah, Yet your men will beat a man for working too slowly or speaking one word they dislike?"

"Were we not to discuss Descartes today?" Oglethorpe says weakly, holding up the book.

"I prefer reality now to philosophy. I live your plantation, sir, do you?"

"I ask you here for conversation," Oglethorpe snaps, "not condemnation."

"And here we are talking."

"You are still a prisoner on my plantation!" Oglethorpe stands up abruptly dropping the book loudly on his desk. "You are not a lord here, Thomas Hamilton."

Thomas frowns deeply. "I have certainly not forgotten this."

"And you have no right to lecture me."

"Someone must tell you when your workers are mistreated. They are still men and they still should be treated as such. They work your fields and punishing them does not make them work faster."

"The discretion of my overseers has not been questioned before. If extreme measures are required then they must be employed. Would you have me let havoc erupt?"

Thomas shakes his head. "I only ask your intervention, your oversight. Your work force of a hundred has diminished to sixty–five."

"Sixty–six, in fact."

Thomas bites back a sigh and pushes on. "You cannot expect the men left to fill such a gap by fear and force."

"Enough." Oglethorpe pulls a servant bell rope. "I said I do not need you to lecture me and I will not hear this. You are one of many here, you are not my confidant, you do not dictate to me."

"It was you who brought me here." Thomas gestures to the study around them. "And you do not see what is out there." He points to the window.

Then the door opens behind Thomas. Oglethorpe looks over Thomas shoulder. "See Thomas out of the house."

* * *

Thomas loads sugar cane into a cart with Benny, the only new prisoner arrived since the sickness. The sun sets now and the sweat on his brow starts to dry. Benny huffs with every load he adds to the cart as they move through the cut fields. Benny has not grown as strong as the rest of them yet and the pace they must keep now tires him out quickly.

"Rest a moment," Thomas says to Benny as he walks on to gather good cane into his basket. He sees Matthew far ahead near the edge of the field, still chopping with his machete.

"... just standing there?"

Thomas turns, catching the end of a man's voice. He sees overseer Jefferson closing in on Benny.

"Thomas said I could –"

"He's not in charge, is he?" Jefferson kicks the edge of the cart. "Get this moving to the sugar cane barn if you think you have nothing to do."

"We aren't done with the –"

"Hey." Jefferson pulls his rifle off his shoulder, cocking it loudly. "If you –"

"Wait!" Thomas shouts, running backs toward them, dropping the basket. He slides quickly between Benny and Jefferson with his hands up. "He is correct. We are not finished with this field."

Jefferson looks back and forth between Thomas and Benny behind him. Then he takes a step back. He points at Benny. "I don't want to see any man just standing."

"Yes, sir," Benny murmurs as Jefferson walks away.

Thomas blows out a breath then turns back to Benny. He rubs a hand over the young man's hair. "Carry the basket, Benny, it will not be much longer today."

* * *

"Why not leave?"

Stephen and Patrick laugh at Mark's hushed words at dinner.

"Right," Patrick says, "straight out the front gate."

"We are prisoners, Mark." Stephen drinks a gulp of his water. "Have you forgotten that?"

"That is why I suggest it!"

"Mark," Thomas says, breaking his bread into pieces. "You do not mean leave, you mean escape. They are quite different. One involves a pursuit."

"Are you afraid of that? Better to remain comfortable?"

Thomas looks at the yellowing bruise on Mark's jaw, weeks since but still healing. "It is more comfort here then most of us have had."

"Oh, right, I feel comfortable. So do Robert and Paul." Both men sit at the far end of the table, one with a black eye and the other wearing a bandage on his neck.

"It is the strain of less men now..."

"I am sure Tad and Bartholomew and Christopher would agree. Would have been very comfortable were they here and not sacrificed."

Thomas' jaw clenches tight – Christopher's face when he smiled. "That is harsh."

"That is true!"

"Keep your voice down," Stephen hisses, Will near the door starts to walk down between the tables, his eye on them. "Your face is almost healed. You like purple that much?"

"I can speak with Oglethorpe," Thomas insists. "There is time."

"Enough, Thomas," Mark hisses. "You're only doing what you always do, arguing the opposite point. Do you think I don't know you well enough by now? You don't believe that. You think just as I do."

"Oi!" Will shouts as he comes up behind Patrick and young Benny, tapping his rifle butt against their chairs. "No talking for the rest of your meal!"

Mark stares at him as Will walks away, the question plain on his face.

Thomas whispers, "wait."

* * *

The next time Thomas arrives for a book discussion with Oglethorpe – he waxing on the dual nature of 'I think, therefore I am' as a simple yet consciousness defining phrase – Thomas pulls two books from Oglethorpe's shelves on agriculture.

"And this idea of the mind as the nature of who a man is, what he thinks becoming himself. It is... what are you doing?"

Thomas holds up one book. "Your plantation reaches six hundred acres now. Sixty men is insufficient to tend and harvest and plant such an expanse when you also account for your skilled labor and those who leave each day for Savannah and back."

"Sixty–six, Thomas, and I believe I told you of your place in such matters."

Thomas turns the book around, a chapter on crop rotation. "Why not let more acres lie fallow for a year or more until you obtain more workers? Perhaps two hundred while the other four are better tended?"

"Ha! Two hundred? And thus lessen our output so?"

Thomas puts a bottle of ink on the book to hold open the page then turns to the other book. "Fields less tended will not produce as well as you want regardless. Why produce a meager product and overrun your workers when you have such a choice? Or, if that will not do, then pick an easier, hardier plant to refresh the soil. One that might require less work."

Thomas flips through the pages of the second book on agricultural crops. He does not know which one yet may work but there must be an option.

"Thomas." Oglethorpe abruptly plants his hand on the book over Thomas' hands. Thomas stiffens and looks at Oglethorpe. "I shall manage my affairs. You are not my lawyer nor my property manager."

"I am a voice for the men here."

Oglethorpe sighs and yanks the book out from under Thomas' hands, walking around him to return the book to the shelf. "Calm yourself, Thomas."

"If you do not change your farming methods then you need more men. Surely there are prisons and asylums enough you might empty in England. Have the upper classes really produced no sons they which to dispose of lately?"

"I may wish this to be a haven but it is not a dumping ground either. I choose each man with care." Oglethorpe picks up the ink pot, puts it back on the table then picks up the first book. "More men shall come here with time." He snaps the book closed and slides it back on the shelf. Conversation closed.

* * *

"It bent, as you can see." Thomas lies the hoe down on the blacksmith table before Stephen. "It may have hit a rock."

"Or there could have been some defect in the metal." Stephen leans over the hoe, touching the hoe head, trying to bend it with his fingers. "Sometimes the metal of the middle grows thinner than a man notices when he forges it."

Thomas smiles at the word 'forge.' It reminds him of medieval knights brandishing armor and elegant swords. He thinks of a sword worn at the hip, at the hip of white breeches and a blue coat on top; James when stopped on the steps beside Thomas for the first time. He stops smiling.

"Good, both of you." Thomas and Stephen look up as the door to the smithy closes behind Mark. "Listen quickly. You know what I said some time ago about leaving."

"Escape," Stephen and Thomas say together.

Mark fixes them both with a look as he stops at the end of the table. "However you word it, my idea of us away from here."

"Ah, so it includes us," Thomas says dryly.

"Do not pander now, Thomas," Mark says. Thomas raises both eyebrows. Mark continues. "You see how the situation has turned recently. I have listened much and I know why our situation has grown worse."

"Because we lost thirty men," Stephen says.

"Christopher," Thomas whispers.

Stephen gestures around the empty smith where he used to have at least one other aid, if not two. "We have noticed the void."

"Then why no one new?" Mark waves a hand. "Why not more prisoners? Because we are not slaves."

Stephen laughs. "Oh, right, now we are not slaves." He picks up the hoe Thomas brought and shoves the metal end into the fire. "Are we well paid workers now?"

"We may not be paid but his house staff are, his overseers are and we are fed better, we were worked less."

"We were treated as men?" Thomas says darkly.

"Yes," Mark says to Thomas. "We still cost more and the other colonies use slaves instead. You can use your maths to know who shall win the economic race now. How long before we change from prisoners to slaves? It may seem like a little distinction but I have seen slaves, I know their state and I know ours. There is a difference."

"We are white men!" Stephen insists. "We may be criminals of a kind, yes, but they cannot make us slaves!"

"You foresee a transformation of our status?" Thomas asks. "You think our treatment will turn worse until it is but the same?"

"Or they should decide this experiment of Oglethorpe's is a failure and we return to the prisons..." His eyes tick to Thomas' wrists. "Or worse where we came from."

Thomas instinctively rubs at the scars. He clenches his jaw. "And you think we should not wait to find out which?"

"Stop, stop!" Stephen says holding up his soot covered hands. "Slavery is outlawed in Savannah and Oglethorpe is in charge of this plantation. If he wants to continue this place as it is, he will."

Mark shakes his head at Stephen. "Money changes all men's minds given enough time or alteration of circumstance. You wait."

"There is still time," Thomas admonishes. "You do not need to act so drastically. I can speak with Oglethorpe."

"Have you not been speaking with him?"

"I can say more! He is not unreasonable."

Mark shakes his head. "And if your plan fails?"

"There is always a chance for mediation." Thomas pulls his hand away from his wrist and grips Mark's shoulder. "Would you rather live as a fugitive?"

"Because living as a prisoner is better?"

"You do not know what the future may be. Our status as prisoners here could change for the better. We could be redeemed in their eyes, be paid for all you know, released even. The plantation is not yet five years old. What might happen with time? What might improve for us?"

"You are arguing the point again!" Mark snaps, pulling away from Thomas' touch.

"But I believe this," Thomas insists – he does, he believes, he hopes like an older version of himself.

Mark laughs darkly. "Such idealism?"

Thomas looks at him seriously. "I have to believe it. Give me time."

Mark worries his lip then looks at Stephen. "Fine and while he has time you should use your time to make something."

Stephen frowns. "What?"

Mark smiles slowly. "A key."

* * *

Thomas works with Matthew, Mark and Patrick. What with less men in the fields, Matthew moved to join the sugar cane fields instead of cotton. The sun burns hot above them, the air dry and no water left in their bucket to drink. They burn the west fields to prepare it for harvesting, one of the last left to complete this season. After this field is harvested, it is to be turned into cotton instead to invigorate the soil.

Thomas and Mark start careful burns along the line of crops while Matthew and Patrick follow, tending to the flames then snuffing them out with damp cloths once the leaves and weeds turn to ash.

"Still half to go," Mark says as he strikes flint over thin hay that Thomas lays at the base of the plants.

"More than that," Thomas says. "We have only finished one plot."

Mark curses under his breath. Thomas stands, glances back at Patrick who pulls some half burnt leaves from a stalk. Then Thomas sees Matthew fall to his knees between the rows.

"Matthew!"

Thomas hurries over to Matthew's side. Matthew shakes his head, holding out his hand. "I am..."

"Are you ill?" Thomas asks, fearing the sickness once more.

"No, I..."

"He needs water," Mark says and Thomas sees the pallor of Matthew's skin, the sweat on his face. "Water!" Mark shouts.

"You can have some when you finish the field!"

Thomas and Mark turn at the same moment toward the overseer, McMillan, Thomas does not know his first name.

"He needs water now to finish this field," Mark counters.

The man shifts his rifle around so his finger nears the trigger. "You will get water when you work for it."

"We need water to work," Thomas counters again.

"What did I just say?" McMillan snaps. "You had your water an hour again."

Mark scoffs. "Two at least!"

"And you can't be spending time squawking! Get him up and finish!"

"He cannot get up," Thomas says. "He would fall again and how would that help."

McMillan suddenly strides toward them. Mark takes a step back and his stance changes, his right foot planted. McMillan, however, chooses Thomas, pushing him aside so he towers over Matthew.

"Get up."

Matthew shifts, plants a hand on the ground to push himself up. "I will, I..."

"Get up!" McMillan grabs the collar of Matthew's shirt and hauls him up, Matthew stumbling.

"Oi!" Patrick snaps.

"He said he would get up," Mark says almost at the same time.

"What's this?" Will and Smith start to walk in their direction through the plants.

"He simply needs –" Thomas starts but Smith interrupts with a shout, "Back up, all of you!"

Thomas turns to see Smith's gun up, threateningly. Mark backs up instantly, gripping Thomas' shirt and pulling him along. Patrick stares for a beat then steps back too. McMillan still holds Matthew's collar. He stands close so his nose nearly touches Matthews.

"You're not falling again, are you?"

Matthew shakes his head. "No..."

"Good." He shoves Matthew back who stumbles once, sways, but does not fall down. McMillan waves his hand at Smith and Will. "All fine now. Just needed a talking to."

Then McMillan trudges back out of the stalks toward his post at the edge of the field. Will stares at Thomas for a moment with a frown then turns, his hand on Smith's shoulder, and walks away once more. Smith had not lowered his weapon once during the exchange.

Mark and Thomas look at each other but neither say a word. Patrick keeps a hand on Matthew's arm for most of the day. Their water arrives two hours later, even Mark near the point of passing out.

"Why would they not give us what we need to work?" Matthew whispers as they finally drink.

"Why give us anything?" Mark growls. "We're little better than slaves after all, right?"

This time none of them counters Mark's dark words.

* * *

One week later, Thomas works with a half a dozen men to load bundles of sugar cane and bags of cotton into the wagons bound for Savannah proper. Matthew hitches up the horses, checking their hooves and the lines of their harness. They have three wagon loads to send in today. One wagon sits ready piled high with cotton. Mark and Patrick work to tie ropes over the top to try and ensure nothing should fall along the way. Thomas and another man lift sugar cane bundles together into one wagon while Benny and two others work at the last wagon, some of the canes coming undone and needing retying. Thomas thinks they may have harvested less cane this season than the one before. He cannot decide if it would be due to the age of the plants or the dearth of labor.

"Why are you doing this now?"

Thomas and the man beside him stop moving at once at the overseer's voice. Benny and one other man stand, unbound cane at their feet.

"The ropes were –"

"This should have been done before," the overseer snaps. It is McMillan, Thomas sees now. "It will delay the shipment!"

"We are tying it up now, won't be long," one of the men says.

"Long enough that this wagon will delay the others as well; you thought of that?"

"If you would stop lecturing us and let us tie them up, we won't delay at all!" Benny suddenly barks.

McMillan backhands Benny so hard across the face he falls to the ground with a cry. Mark and Patrick appear instantly at Benny's sides. Thomas only a beat behind. Patrick hauls Benny up and shoves him behind himself.

"He said he would finish it!" Mark snaps too close to McMillan's face. "You want him to work or you just want to throw your job around, eh?"

"Back up!" McMillan shouts back.

"You'd rather us delay so you have a reason to rough up a small one like him up, wouldn't you?"

"I said, back up." McMillan shifts his rifle in his hands.

Thomas grabs Mark's shoulder and pulls him back. "Mark, stop."

"All of you!" McMillan hefts his rifle up to his shoulder, his finger tight on the trigger and the end of the barrel right in Thomas face. "Back away!"

Every man takes a surprised step backward expect Thomas. Thomas stands still looking at the dark hole of the barrel. He hears James say, ' _Civilization needs its monsters_.' He hears his own voice saying ' _it is better here'_ to Christopher smiling before him.

"You are right," Thomas says slowly, evenly. "We shall work faster and not delay… sir."

McMillan looks at all of them, his eyes darting too quickly. "Back up."

Thomas takes a step back, forcing his eyes up to McMillan instead of the rife pointed at him. "We apologize. We will fix it now, may we?"

McMillan stares at him for two more beats. Thomas feels Mark shift closer to him. Then McMillan pulls the rifle down, growls, "hurry up," and stalks away from them.

Matthew appears from around one horse and gestures, "Come here, Benny, they can manage. Let me see your face."

Thomas turns and crouches low, bundling up some of the cane again while Mark wraps rope around it.

"Do you still say we should stay, not worth a risk?" Mark hisses at Thomas.

Thomas bites the edge of his lip and shakes his head once. "I will talk to Oglethorpe."

Mark scoffs. "Right and while you talk that one shoots our young boy here or you even!" Thomas looks up sharply at Mark who stares back, tying the knot in place. "You think Oglethorpe will mourn your death? I think he'll find another person to read with."

Thomas blows out a breath and does not answer.

* * *

"We cannot simply talk of your books now," Thomas says almost as soon as he enters the study – his request, not Oglethorpe's this time.

Oglethorpe sighs. "I have a mind to stop this all together."

"You must listen to someone."

Oglethorpe shakes his head. "You speak as though I do not understand the management of my own estate, as though I do this blindly. We are not in England. I did not inherit this land. I built it."

Thomas nods. "And that should mean you wish to protect it all the more, would you not?"

"Protect it? I must protect it every day, the natives, the climate, finances. Do you think I only read books with you?"

"I said no such thing," Thomas explains, "but I believe you do not see the nature of the men who work this land of yours. You think of reforming the lives of men accused of only little and bringing them peace, of creating something new here."

"Yes."

"And you have, you did, but it is not maintained. It is easy to slide back."

"Are you going to talk more about rotating crops and the weight of work? I understand you were a lord in your life before and work of this nature is different –"

"I have been here years, sir, my station then has no bearing now." Thomas steps closer to Oglethorpe, around the gilt chairs. "I know what I am now and so do they." Thomas points out the window beside Oglethorpe's desk. "Your prisoners and your overseers know who each are, do you?"

"What do you say?"

"The pressure to keep your plantation as it was, as it had expanded and no longer does, is your overseer's burden and they act in kind." Oglethorpe tries to turn away again but Thomas walks around him so Oglethorpe must look at him. "They act as prison guards more than overseers, to give punishment instead of cultivate. Have you looked at your fields lately? Are you more interested in profits now than your reform?"

Oglethorpe points sharply at Thomas. "I will not be told of my own affairs by you, not by the likes of you!"

"One that dares to try and tell you your errors?"

"A prisoner, yes, and a sinner, a criminal no matter where you have moved and what benevolence you are shown now!"

Thomas purses his lips – hears Peter saying ' _I saved you_.' "Ah, and I have no standing now and thus no insight you should deign to hear?"

"I am aware of the problems of my own plantation! It is I who manage it, I who see the profits and loss, I who bring men here to better their lives and you say my errors? This is a savage land which we work to improve, to find something better." Oglethorpe laughs harshly. "Would you rather Bedlam? Would you rather they all back where they came from?"

"I would rather patience," Thomas says, controlling his own temper. "I would rather more men in your Eden. I would rather overseers who remember their force and cruelty are not required, that we work as bid and understand suffering enough to need no further lessons."

Oglethorpe laughs again. "Or perhaps you have become too pampered here and forget your proper place now?"

"Pampered?" Thomas says incredulously.

"I have had enough; I need not be lectured. You overstep your bounds! Will!"

"Someone must for you to hear me. Do you think the men here will simply take the abuse put out, as you said, they are not slaves."

"Will!"

Thomas hears the door to the study open and sees Will appear out of the corner of his eye. "Sir?"

"Take Thomas out of here."

"You must listen to me; I am not saying these things idly. I care about their wellbeing above all and if their wellbeing is best here –"

"I said, out!"

Will suddenly grabs Thomas' arm hard, right over a scar – a burn, on a table, in a room, Jonathan in the corner, Bill holding him down, Dr. Blake speaking of humors. Thomas yanks his arm away instinctively, hitting Will with his elbow. Will suddenly hits Thomas over the head with something, his rifle, his hand, Thomas cannot tell, and Thomas falls to his knees. He tastes blood in his mouth. Then Will grabs him by the arm and hauls him back to standing.

Thomas sees Oglethorpe turn away with a clipped, "Out."

Thomas stares at Oglethorpe's back as Will pulls him out the door. Thomas realizes like another smack to the head that he trusted Oglethorpe. It was not a trust of a lover or family or friendship but it was at least enough trust to think 'you will not hurt me.' Then the door closes and Will flips Thomas around, pushing him down the hall.

"You just don't know when to close your mouth!" Will chides as he leads Thomas to the back entrance, not the front any longer. "Always pushing your luck."

"Yes," Thomas says, "it would seem so."

Thomas walks back outside and curses himself once more for believing, for the remainder of his idealism. James was right about the world from the first moment Thomas met him. Has Thomas not learned that by now?

* * *

It is late after their evening meal when walking back to the barracks that Mark brings up his plans once more.

"The walls are not as high as one may think, not insurmountable."

"You suggested a key to Stephen."

"I did."

"So why care about the walls?"

"Because I think of all angles, Thomas." Mark gives him a look in the darkness. "Not all eggs in one basket, as they say."

Thomas nods as they near the barracks. "So consider the walls."

"It is not just the overseers and their… force." Mark slows their pace, their fellow prisoners and Will further ahead. "I have heard the talk from town. Slaves are preferred why use prisoners?"

"Why indeed."

"Who else cares about high minded ideals. It is profit that drives most men."

"Even those who establish their ventures on ideals?"

"You have seen it. You have lived it here."

"And you think we march toward disaster."

"Can you not speak plainly, Thomas?" Mark snaps, suddenly stopping near the edge of the cane fields, the barracks still some yards away. "Sometimes I miss your silence of the ship!"

Thomas raises his eyebrows. "You want me to agree to your plan of escape?"

"I do not need your permission. I can flee quite well without your support."

"You have it."

"Even should it be me alone, I – What?" Mark stares.

"You have my support," Thomas repeats.

Mark blinks once, swallows, turns away then looks back to Thomas. "You mean this?"

"Yes?"

His voice lowers even more, "to escape?"

"Yes," Thomas says seriously.

Thomas thinks the remainder of his life cannot be this, not just as a prisoner. There is nothing, no one, keeping him in this place. If he needed to find redemption then Christopher gave that to him. If he should still help someone let it be these men in finding something better that this place. If James were standing here beside him, James would say 'escape.'

"Most of us here do not deserve this fate we have and we do not deserve to languish as a laborer of this plantation for all our lives. Even prisoners serve terms toward freedom."

"Some do."

"We do. We should." Thomas's voice is steady, committed, determined. "We deserve our freedom."

Mark shakes his head. "You do not even know what I did, Thomas."

"And you do not know my crime. Do you wish to talk me out of this?"

Mark smiles slowly. "No."

"Then do not play my part. Accept what I say. I am on your side now. We must try. It is worth a risk for what we could gain."

"And your talking succeeded in nothing?"

"I tried. Oglethorpe was not ready to listen."

"You two!" They turn to see Will gesturing at them. "Inside and lights out, now!"

Mark looks back at Thomas, suddenly grinning. "We had better start planning."

* * *

It is clear to Thomas, and Mark as well, that their best plan of escape involves multiple people. They must arrange many things on the plantation itself to ensure their flight. Then once beyond the walls they must manage an escape lasting more than an hour. Savannah is too small to conceal them.

"We should steal a boat," Mark says over breakfast. "I was a sailor, I can guide the rest of you and we can make our way north."

"One true sailor and we novices?" Patrick says incredulously. "You think that would work?"

"I shall make it work!"

"I think you are so eager you will lead us all to be caught again in ten minutes!"

"If you are so afraid then stay behind."

"Do not test my fortitude."

"Enough!" Thomas hisses. "This is not a time to question your manhood. Your boat is a good idea, Mark, but we also must leave this plantation first. A step at a time."

Thomas asks their fellow prisoners, looks and measures each man; who may agree to their scheme? Who would keep it a secret even if they do not join? The entire plantation cannot escape and Thomas is no leader of a rebellion.

"Matthew, should you really wish to finish out your days in this place?"

"Do not ask me this, Thomas," he replies as he hangs the horse tack from the day. "I am not one of Mark's band."

"You could be."

"Why? What value should I bring?"

"You are showing it now." He gestures to the horses. "How else should we abscond to Savannah?"

"They would chase you far more if you stole horses," Matthew hisses.

"Do you not wish for a real life once more?" Thomas presses. "Do you not think that you deserve it?"

"My place is here, I have no other life, nothing to go back to."

"Nor do I," Thomas admits. "But this does not mean I could not create a new life in these colonies? It is a perfect chance for a man to start over."

Matthew stares off into space, stroking his hand down one horse's nose. "I am sorry, Thomas." He turns to meet Thomas' eye. "I am not brave as you are."

* * *

Their final count of men willing to risk flight is six: Mark, Thomas, Patrick, Stephen, Benny, and one other man by the name of William. They plan quickly as some of them fear others they asked about their plot may give their desire away. Mark, fortunately, has spent more time than any of them pondering a move toward freedom.

"If you hadn't kept trying to convince me of politics and talking," Mark grouses at Thomas as they unload crop from a barn for shipment, "I'd be long gone."

"I never stopped you."

"Oh no?"

Thomas gives him a look as they haul out the last bundle of cane. "Did you see me locking you in the barracks or turning you in?"

Mark smiles at Thomas. "Well, maybe I wanted to be sure and have you along." Mark shrugs. "Guess I've grown fond of you."

"Or you have no other companions."

"Harsh, sir."

"I am a laborer now. It makes one crass." He slams the door of the barn as Mark only laughs.

They discuss the particulars of Mark's plan outside at night in Thomas' retreat at the end of the barracks line. Mark's plan involves an escape by night, the suppression of those who might stop them through drink, hiking through the forest toward Savannah, and then commandeering a ship to sail them up the coast. If the overseers drink enough they will sleep soundly. The problems of the gate and walls can be surmounted if Stephen can forge a key in secret. If not there are ladders or ropes.

"Which we must take with us, at least to the other side of the wall to arouse no suspicion, " Thomas emphasizes.

The woods and the trek to Savannah may prove problematic. They should not take the road for fear of discovery but the woods are thick and difficult to navigate.

"We could travel within sight of the road, follow it from within the tree line," William suggests. "We shall remain hidden with the dark but not become lost."

Their last, and most difficult task, will lie with obtaining a boat. They must steal one and then sail it.

"Do you mean to give us lessons?" Stephen asks, still somewhat unconvinced of their plan's success.

"I have sailed some," William says.

"Really?" Benny says in surprise.

"And the rest of you can listen to orders, can't you?" Mark says then gestures to the dark fields in the instance. "You do work here."

"You do not fear the weather or the tides we will not know of?" Thomas asks.

Mark shakes his head. "Do we have a choice?"

Their final question is where to go once they sail.

"There is no point returning to England, as least for me and I assume the rest of you."

Patrick and Stephen laugh. William shakes his head very seriously. Mark looks at Thomas. Thomas nods as well. "You know what I have to return to."

"Then the colonies can become our home as free men."

Mark suggests Philadelphia or Providence. Philadelphia, founded by Quakers, is the largest of the colonies and one where they should all be able to find work and anonymity, not to mention a leniency toward crime. Providence, as their other alternative, is the most liberal settlement in the land with freedom of conscious by way of religion, no imprisonment for debt and no slavery.

"Just how do you know so much about Providence?" Stephen asks. "I could tell you about Philadelphia but this small northern place?"

"How many times must I tell you I was a navy man?"

"Navy means you know everything?" Patrick quips.

"What matters is that we remain free, correct?" Thomas interrupts. All the men nod. "And there is no reason we all must stay in the same place. If some may decide Philadelphia not to their liking, then press further north. This is the new world. There are opportunities aplenty for fresh starts; something each man here deserves. Once free we do not answer to them or to each other. You may make your own destiny."

Mark smiles approvingly at Thomas in the dim light. This may not be parliament or his salons, but Thomas remembers how to speak so men will listen. It may be Mark's plan, and Mark in charge, but Thomas remembers how to lead.

* * *

Thomas wonders if Christopher were still alive, would he have joined them? If he did, would he have stayed with Thomas? Would they have found a home in Philadelphia or elsewhere? Would they have tried to live together with the happiness and comfort they could find? Or with other options, with civilization returned, would they have split apart?

If it were James, if James were waiting beyond the walls of this plantation, Thomas knows he would not care about anything civilization might say. If James waited with freedom, Thomas would never let the world break them apart again.

So with neither one waiting or beside him, what will Thomas' new life be?

* * *

Two weeks after they begin planning comes the night of their escape. Stephen manages to obtain two barrels of rum through one of the women who work in the kitchen. None of them ask how. Thomas uses his known position as Oglethorpe's reading companion to deliver it to the overseers before dinner.

"A present for your hard work which is not overlooked." Even Will holds no suspicion.

When the moon reaches a low point in the sky and the plantation has slept for several hours, Mark rises and Thomas follows him, each carrying what little they have in bags over their backs. They meet the other four men near the blacksmith hut. Stephen ducks inside then returns with a small, cloth wrapped package. They keep to the shadowy areas, buildings and trees too wide to remove when clearing land. It takes them fifteen minutes to reach the outer wall. The two night guards at the gate are not at their posts. A discarded cup lies where one man should be along with both their rifles.

"Fortunate," Benny says in surprise.

"I asked Evelyn if any of the women would help," Mark answers, as William walks over to the rifles, picking up both.

Thomas gives him a look but Mark only stares at the gate. Then he gestures to Stephen. Stephen blows out a breath and unwraps the cloth, an iron key inside. He steps up to the gate, fitting it into the lock. Though the key is not intricate, he had little time to compare with the genuine keys in making his own. He twists the key but Thomas hears a clang. Stephen mutters a curse, pulls the key out and tries once more. He looks back at the men and shakes his head.

"No matter," Mark says.

He takes off his bag and pulls out a rope.

"We have nothing to tie it off on, so one of us must go over first then hold it taught for the others to climb. He turns his head to William. "You are the biggest of us all, do you believe you can manage?"

William nods.

"Right, then we just have to lift you over."

The wall around the plantation stands at least twelve feet high. However, William is tall, as is Thomas, and all of the men are strong. Mark and Stephen help to heave William higher with their arms and Thomas stands close so William may step on his shoulder. Thomas grits his teeth at the digging of William's foot but he plants his feet as they form an unsteady triangle of support for the man who must weigh some two hundred plus pounds. Then William's hands grip the top of the wall and he heaves himself upward. For a sickening two seconds he hangs halfway there, his position not quite secure then his weight shifts forward. William swings around so he sits on the edge of the wall. He turns back and holds out his hand. Mark makes a knot in the end of the rope and throws it up. William catches it on the first try. He turns his head to look toward the other side of the wall. He blows out a breath then jumps. They hear him hit the ground on the other side with a crunch.

Thomas seizes up with concern. "Are you hurt?"

After a pause William replies, "No, only a tree branch." Then the end of the rope with the knot sails back over the wall to land at their feet. "Come along then, I've tied one end to a tree and I can help pull."

"Genius, this one," Patrick says, only half joking.

Stephen climbs up first, quick and seemingly effortless. Mark hands up the rifles to him and he jumps down to the other side with both.

"Is that wise for us to be armed?" Thomas asks.

"Is it wise not to be?" Mark counters.

Patrick follows after him, gruff and determined to make his own way up and over, muttering the whole way. Thomas and Mark then help Benny climb up, not as skilled in lifting his own weight. He slips twice but manages to make it over the top with William on the other side pulling as well.

"Well?" Mark asks, with only he and Thomas left.

Thomas gestures. "You go ahead. It was your plan."

"Yes, and four men before me." Mark cocks his head. "You're not changing your mind now, are you?"

"Even if I were, you would not need to worry that I would betray you."

Mark purses his lips. "I didn't say that."

"You didn't." Thomas puts his shoulder against the wall and makes a step with his hands. "Now go up."

Mark steps in Thomas' hand, grips the rope and climbs his way up the wall with Thomas helping to push him up until he rises too high. When Mark disappears over the other side of the wall, Thomas grips the rope himself. He peers back once at the plantation, the waving fields of sugar he hears more than sees.

"Goodbye, Christopher."

Thomas climbs up the rope, his feet finding uneven brick in the wall to help. He slips once but soon he feels the rope puling to help him over. It takes longer than Thomas would like, his own strength ebbing away faster than he would expect. However, he reaches the top of the wall, breathing a few times to rest himself. He sees the other men waiting below, Mark already speaking quietly with Stephen and Benny tracking down the will.

William stares up at him. "Jump and roll once you reach the ground, spares your ankles."

Thomas nods. The wall appears higher from the top. He has not, however, come this far for the view. Thomas throws the rope back down to William then jumps off the wall himself. He almost forgets to roll when he hits the dirt but his own imbalance helps with that. He rises to his knees, no worse for the drop, brushing off small detritions from the forest floor. He looks out into the dark woods and sees a pair of eyes. He freezes, thinking the eyes a wolf or some other creature worth fearing. Then the eyes blink. They are human eyes.

"Thomas?"

Thomas jerks, looking up at William. He turns back to the woods quickly but sees nothing now, no eyes.

"I saw…"

"What?"

Thomas stands up, still looking into the trees.

"Come on!" Mark hisses.

Thomas turns away from the trees and follows where the others wait. He feels the book in his bag, heavy and sharp at points. He thinks of Christopher lying in bed as Thomas read, his face pale; how he said, 'oh Thomas' the last time. He thinks of James' face when Thomas gave him the other copy, the way he swallowed and looked away at the inscription inside; how tightly his fingers gripped the fine leather and how fiercely he kissed Thomas over the words, 'thank you.'

Their troop follows the wall of the plantation, about a yard between them and the bricks. They must pick through the underbrush, no path to follow and the trees almost ravenous to reclaim their space after the wall. At a few points they must break branches to they can pass. Thomas thinks he hears answering breaks and snaps in the woods every so often. He keeps jerking his head to look behind them or sidelong deeper into the trees. Fifteen minutes of walking finds the end of the wall and the edge of Oglethorpe's land.

"Finally," Mark says.

Then the sound of a gunshot breaks the silence of the night. A strangled noise, not quite a shout answers from the front of their line. Thomas sees Benny fall against the corner of the plantation wall.

"Shit!" Patrick cries.

Thomas turns back to see Will and McMillan behind them. At their front, he sees Smith and two native men, bows strung and taught.

"Benny!" Mark shouts, running to the young man's side.

"All of you!" Will cries. "Stop where you are!"

Patrick pulls one of the rifles off his shoulder, trying to swing it around in time but Will smacks the rifle away with the point of his own. William shoots toward the Creek with the other rifle but his shot goes wide. An arrow hits William in the arm so he drops the rifle with a shot. He falls to his knees, his hands up in surrender.

"He's alive," Mark says from where he crouches by Benny. "He is breathing."

McMillan suddenly marches forward, points his gun down at Benny. Thomas shouts, "No!" Then McMillan shoots Benny again.

"He would have been dead soon," McMillan grumbles by way of explanation.

Mark abruptly jumps up and shoves McMillan hard in the chest, his rifle falling. "You fucking –"

McMillan pushes Mark back, nearly tripping him over Benny's body. Patrick moves to help Mark but Will points his rifle and Patrick stays still. Mark manages a punch which hits near McMillan's eye. McMillan, however, pulls a pistol from the back of his belt and clocks Mark across the face. Thomas sees blood fly from Mark's mouth as he falls to one knee.

"Should shoot you all right now," McMillan growls, "for attempted escape. You know how good you have it here?"

"Not with the likes of you!" Mark spits.

"Enough," Thomas cautions because he sees the look in McMillan's eye, like so many orderlies at Bedlam. "We have lost."

McMillan laughs. "Right, lost." He cocks the pistol. "Lost more than this."

Stephen shifts but one of the Creek natives says something and points their bow at him. Stephen takes a step back, shooting a look at Thomas. Would they really kill them all now for this?

Thomas takes a cautious step toward McMillan. "Please, we surrender. We should not have tried to escape."

"Right you should not."

"He just bloody shot Benny!" Mark says, his head spinning around to look up at Thomas. "You think you can talk to them? Him?" He points up at McMillan.

"Shut your mouth!" McMillan snaps, moving so the pistol is only inches from Mark's face.

"I said we surrender!" Thomas tries again, attempting to step between Mark and McMillan. "We will return, we will submit. Please, one loss is enough."

McMillan's eyes tick up to Thomas. "Right, take you back so you can just try it again?"

"We will not. We will come back peacefully."

Thomas thinks the man might still be drunk from their sabotage of earlier in the night. He does not appear as though he hears everything Thomas says. Thomas shifts around, closer to the pistol, closer to McMillan blocking Mark.

"It was my plan," Thomas tries.

"Thomas…" Mark hisses.

"I talked the rest of them into this foolhardiness." Thomas gestures at the others. "They simply were taken in by me. Do not make them pay for my mistake."

Mark grabs Thomas' leg. "Thomas!"

McMillan laughs. "Oh yeah, I believe you." Then he suddenly grabs Thomas by the throat, his nails digging and Thomas' air gone. "And I believe you'd not like it if I did this."

McMillan presses the muzzle of the pistol against Mark's forehead and pulls the trigger. The sound rings in Thomas ears, blood splatters on his cheek. Thomas hears Stephen scream and Patrick curse. He feels William try to stand up and run once more. Thomas stares at McMillan, the wild smile on his face as Mark falls slowly to his side, hitting Thomas' leg. Thomas does not look down, does not look away from McMillan.

"Who is the criminal now?" Thomas rasps.

"Enough!" Will shouts. He steps close and knocks McMillan's hand away from Thomas. Thomas sucks in a breath, staggering backward and over Mark's still form. "Enough! You are all coming back now. You!" Will points at William then to Benny. "Carry him. You two." He points at Patrick and Stephen. "You'll carry him." And he points at Mark.

The men do not move for a breath then they stand, gathering up their two fallen compatriots. Will shoves McMillan forward again, a step away from Thomas. "Go on. Just get back inside, tell Oglethorpe we have them."

McMillan shrugs, picking up his fallen rifle. "Four of them at least."

"Just tell him!"

Smith and the two Creek natives keep their weapons on the other three men as they slowly walk back toward the main entrance of the plantation, defeated and carrying the dead.

Will stands beside Thomas, grabs his arm then pulls him along. "Damn it, Thomas." And Thomas thinks his voice sounds sad.

Thomas stumbles but walks, his mind oddly blank as Will pulls him back through the gate.

 _Non sibi sed aliis._

* * *

As punishment for their escape attempt, Thomas, Patrick, Stephen and William spend two weeks under lock and key in the smallest cotton shed. One might think it odd that a plantation meant as a prison does not have any cells for misbehavior, but it does not. Their hands are manacled to rings in the walls where usually ropes are threaded to raise bags to the upper barn level. Thomas fares far better than he would have expected. Wood floor and cracks which allow the wind to blow through remind him this current incarceration is not Bedlam. Stephen and William appear as displeased yet stable as Thomas. Upon their recapture they all expected some retribution, after all.

However, Patrick wears considerably under whatever remembrances of his past their shed jail brings up. He shakes for days, pulling at the manacles so the clink becomes a steady rhythm like a background hum and grumbling to himself. His wrists bleed and Thomas fears Patrick will create scars like his own.

"Can he not stop?" William hisses. "Just stop it, Patrick!"

"Patrick," Thomas says with an attempt at a soothing tone. "Please, you only hurt yourself now."

"I can't, I can't." Patrick starts shouting. "You bloody bastards!" He pulls harder and keeps shouting. "I can't! Fucking son of whore bastards!"

"This is worse…" Stephen groans.

William snaps. "Shut your hole!"

"I said, I can't, fucking, damned… I won't!" Patrick pulls with renewed vigor on his chains.

"And you won't have to for long," Thomas says insistently. "Remember? This prison is about work, not chains. They will not leave us here long, not four men needed to do their work."

Patrick's volume lowers but he keeps pulling at the manacles. "I can't bloody…"

"Now is not forever," Thomas tells Patrick sternly, finally gaining his attention. Patrick stares at him, going still. Thomas repeats, as much for himself as Patrick, "Now is not forever."

When released from their manacles and wooden cell, Oglethorpe and the overseers remind them they have nowhere to go. What other life could they hope for now, they are in the wild new world and prisoners at that. Can they truly expect better? Thomas believes them.

However, not long after their failure, Oglethorpe dismisses McMillan from his position. New prisoners being to arrive, eventually amounting to twenty new men nearly making up for the loss of labor they suffered so many months back. Thomas plays the part of the teacher for those who must learn to farm, as Christopher had for him.

When Oglethorpe drops the new men off, overseer Bradford at his side, he says to Thomas, "If I only hold to my ideals when times are easy then what can I say of myself?"

It sounds like an apology.

* * *

Thomas works, helps the other men, spends every day in the field. Matthew says to him, "It is only you and I left from our boat." Thomas no longer reads with Oglethorpe. He thinks back to when he first arrived. He thought then that this may be the place where he would die one day. Perhaps he was not wrong. Thomas has no idea what else in the world might be waiting for him now other than this.

The sun shines high above, summer once more, and sweat the constant companion of Thomas' neck. He hoes lines in a field which will soon be seeded for sugar cane. Two of the west fields are to remain fallow for a season, so they are lengthening an existing field where cane already grows. Stephen works on a cart in the distance where William chops ready cane with two of the new men. A few other men work somewhere behind Thomas on these new rows. They are nearly done and will soon need to start the painful hunch of seed after seed to plant.

Thomas pauses in his hoeing, breathing in the thick Savannah air, the sounds of bugs loud in the early afternoon. He hears something else, the clink of metal that does not match their farm tools. It sounds like chains, like the past. Thomas could hear wrongly. It could be any noise – the slip of a knife, a hoe hitting a wagon wheel, the clink of the overseer's rifles shifting, any number of things. But Thomas knows it is not.

Thomas turns slowly. He senses someone nearing behind him – a walk unlike any he recognizes of the men here, heavy and burdened and slow.

He turns and he sees…

Christopher's voice says, ' _you found something here_.'

Not something, someone. Someone found him.

James' hair is short, barely there even, no thick locks tied at the back of neck now. His hair is shorn so low the color is near indiscernible, more to describe as dark than red or auburn as Thomas knows it is. His face bears a beard like the last time Thomas saw him, spread further now across his jaw. The red is unmistakable there, as bright as Thomas recalls it.

He wears black, a simple shirt and breeches as Thomas does, but a darkness that appears so markedly different from everything that is this plantation in Savannah, a thick leather belt across his waist. He looks entirely out of place.

His shoulders appear broader, his chest too, as far as Thomas sees from where he stands stuck to the spot. He seems weathered – years on the bottom of the ocean, rotting in Thomas' mind – older and tired. The expression on his face, however, must match Thomas' own, absolute astonishment at a man having risen from the dead.

He walks slowly through the dirt toward Thomas, as though he thinks Thomas may disappear should he move too quickly or look away. Thomas stands still in contrast, his hoe falling from his hand without his notice. He tries to keep breathing, to trust what he sees.

Peter says, ' _they died at sea_.'

Once more Thomas realizes someone else he should not have believed because this man before him, this beautiful man, is very much alive.

James stops a yard away from Thomas, less even, within an easy, real, distance – not only a memory. He stares at Thomas. Thomas wonders what he must see in turn, not the polished, London lord Thomas was. He wears course, worn linen, scars hidden underneath, a beard on his own face, dirt on his hands, his body sweaty and tired. He is ten years older now, they both are. Is he no longer the man they both knew?

Then Thomas smiles, he laughs – this is real, James is real, James is here, and they are both alive. Thomas steps forward and pulls them close together by James' shoulders. James wraps his arms tight around Thomas, his face against Thomas neck and Thomas laughs more over James' shoulder, touches his new shorn hair. Thomas thinks he may cry.

They slide their arms back but Thomas does not let go. Thomas touches James' neck, his cheek. He feels different, rough like the navy man's sea but also the same, that few inches shorter and still stronger than himself. Thomas nuzzles his nose against James' cheek – so close now and something he thought gone.

Christopher asks, ' _Why are you here_?'

Thomas is here, now, because he was waiting for this moment.

Thomas kisses James, hands over his cheeks, his lips hesitant, afraid almost, like they were the very first time.

When they finally separate, move back just enough to see each other's faces again, Thomas says the word – the precious name – he has not spoken aloud since arriving on the plantation. His voice full of need and loss and memory and ten years of aching, suppressed love. He whispers, "James."


End file.
